I came upon a fascinating tidbit from a military powerpoint presentation, while researching GPS receivers and August 21 rollover ...

STATUS: SPACE SEGMENT - SATELLITES & SUPPORT SYSTEMS All GPS satellites are Y2K/EOW rollover compliant (Analyses performed by Boeing & Lockheed-Martin.)

BUT .. Satellite Support Systems are NOT Y2K compliant ... with initial delivery for testing replacement for MOSC sometime in September. Cutting it close, don't you think? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SLIDE #13:

Satellite support systems are not Y2K compliant but are scheduled for repair or replacement - Mission Operations Support Center (MOSC) - Operational Support System (OSS)

Integrated Mission Operations Support Center (IMOSC) - New development (will be developed Y2K compliant) - Will replace MOSC Dec 99 - Will replace OSS 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SLIDE #14:

MOSC [Mission Operations Support Center] - No fixes in place due to age of system (decommission) - Schedule to be replaced by IMOSC - Work around in place if IMOSC slips

OSS [Operational Support System] - Full OSS compliance scheduled for Apr 99

IMOSC [Integrated Mission Operations Support Center] - Scheduled for Sep 99 initial delivery for testing - IMOSC/MOSC parallel operations Sep 9 - Dec 99 http://gps.laafb.af.mil/y2000/index.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I found the link in this news article ...

U.S. AGENCY URGES CHECKS OF GPS RECEIVERS May 12, 1999 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A congressional watchdog agency Wednesday urged Americans who use Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational receivers to check that they can cope with an internal date change in the system due in August.

Some experts see the date change as a bigger problem for users of the GPS than the Year 2000 computer problem.

GPS is a satellite-based navigation system run by the Department of Defense but plays an increasingly important role in civilian airline operations, truck fleet tracking, recreational boating and computer maps in cars.

The General Accounting Office told a congressional panel that precise time signals in the system were also used to synchronize commercial communications networks and ignorance of the August date change and the ability of the GPS receiver being used could cause network failures ...

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Marvin Langston, said the satellites themselves were never affected ... Managing editor [BOAT/U.S. Magazine] Elaine Dickinson told Reuters most receivers made after 1994 were ready for August and Y2K ... http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/tc/story.html?s=v/nm/19990512/tc/yk_airlines_2.html

In the period between the euro conversion and Jan. 1, 2000, the belt of 24 satellites making up the Global Positioning System is programmed to reset its date system . [Midnight, August 21, 1999] This could cause problems in navigation and power plants, and even in the calculation of interest for international financial transactions ..

GPS dates also are used to synchronize some electrical power plants and large international transfers of funds ....

For instance, if it takes a second to transfer $1 billion between two banks in different countries, the interest could be a few hundred dollars. But if one of the banks, relying on the GPS satellites, hasn't planned for the date rollover, its computers could think the transfer took 20 years. The interest could be off by trillions of dollars in that case ...

Because of the rollover's timing, computer systems handling large financial systems will need to be checked for euro, GPS date and Y2K compliance all at the same time. http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/wires2/1008/n_ap_1008_215.sml http://www.year2000.com/archive/dangers.html

... The PanAmSat satellite outage is only a hint of the trouble that may be triggered by the so-called millennium bug, said John Pike, associate director of the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington think tank.

Satellite networks are a critical link to communications worldwide, from cellular phones to weapons guidance and aircraft navigation. Yet the computers running those networks could be as vulnerable to the problem as the oldest mainframe, he said.

The satellite networks rely on computers that are controlled by thousands of software programs and millions of lines of programming code, Pike said. And it is those computers that are the likely year 2000 targets. http://www.fas.org/2000/signs98/year0521.htm Federation of American Scientists

FCC YYEAR 2000 SURVEY: UNCERTAINTY IN WIRELESS INDUSTRY The FCC sent its Y2K Communications Sector Report to a random sample of 300 commercial wireless providers and also to the twelve largest carriers in the country.

Only 31 percent of the 312 companies that received the FCC survey actually completed it. The responding companies provide wireless service to some 42 million customers across the United States -- a number that, according to the FCC, is less than 40 percent of the total number of U.S. commercial wireless subscribers in 1997. To the FCC, such a low response rate suggests that the threat of Year 2000 problems in the wireless communications industry is very real. http://year2000.dci.com/Articles/9905121.htm

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), May 17, 1999

Answers

Progress since May?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 11, 1999.