By Stephen Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 3, 1998; Page A10

The Pentagon's planning for the new millennium includes numerous checks to track the safety of U.S. nuclear weapons and early-warning satellites-systems that are heavily dependent on computers. But the Defense Department continues to fret over how Russia, China and former Soviet republics will react if their own computer systems crash.

U.S. armed forces are developing a plan this summer to share information with Russia and other countries "so that we do not enter into the nightmare condition where everybody is all of a sudden uncertain and their screens go blank. That would be a very worrisome environment for all of us," Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Pentagon probably will have to set up an "international focal point for sharing early warning and, for example, missile launch information, in this period of time," Hamre said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen said officials are "confident" that U.S. nuclear and North America Aerospace Defense Command systems "will work as they should on January 1, 2000." The software code for another major network, the Air Force Global Positioning System, also is being fixed and tested.

Yet the Pentagon continues to struggle to prepare many other computer systems, some operating with 30-year-old software, for the moment when 1999 rolls into 2000. The Defense Department is four months behind schedule on Y2K repairs, and "we're running out of time," said William A. Curtis, the Pentagon official in charge of Year 2000 fixes. "Our problem is tough."

The Pentagon lags on almost every aspect of the Year 2000 problem, according to the General Accounting Office. Pentagon leaders recruited Curtis in March to oversee a revamped Year 2000 effort, including contingency plans in the event that testing of the computer fixes next year reveals persistent problems.

Although the department operates with more than 25,000 computer systems, Curtis has focused on 2,803 "mission critical" systems. Of those, 480 are believed to be "2000 compliant" and 1,898 are in various phases of repair. The remainder will be replaced or removed as no longer needed.

In the coming year the Pentagon plans to use regularly scheduled troop exercises to test weapons and systems for problems. Some commands already are running special tests, such as this month's "Year 2000 Certification Acid Test" of a jet fighter in New Mexico.

The $2 million test began after computer clocks in a specially modified F-4 were set to 25 minutes before midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, computer engineer Michael Garcia said. The F-4, piloted by remote control, was tracked by 20 instruments and demonstrated that the aircraft's avionics and other systems will not be disrupted by the data change. The flight also tested the connections between 100 different computer systems.

Nevertheless, an estimated 34 systems, including some supporting Tomahawk cruise missiles and certain Navy ships, will not be fixed by the White House deadline of March 1999. The Pentagon has set up a "high risk systems board" to evaluate such systems and determine what defense capabilities might be lost if repairs are not made before Jan. 1, 2000.