IT replacement gear streams into Pentagon

The Defense Department is continuing to assess and rebuild its information technology infrastructure following the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon.

DOD officials ordered more than 1,000 proprietary Secured Desktop Gateway communications enclosures for immediate delivery from Holocom Networks. Pentagon officials contacted the company for the hardware to help assure the security of data at temporary desktops in unclassified locations, company officials said.

Meanwhile, the airplane crash and subsequent fire wiped out about 70 percent of the Navy's office space at the Pentagon, including its network control center and some 30 servers that stored the service's budget data, Navy officials said.

The Navy has moved about 1,000 people out of the Pentagon onto five floors of leased space in nearby Crystal City, in Arlington, Va.

The Navy's network control center was back in operation about two days after the crash, said Ron Turner, the Navy's deputy chief information officer —something he called a "major accomplishment."

Much of that work is being done under the Navy Marine Corps Intranet contract.

NMCI's lead vendor, Electronic Data Systems Corp., has delivered gear that includes 860 notebook computers, 335 desktop PCs, 30 servers, cabling, routers and other IT equipment.