[Military]Corroboration? U.S. Air Force (Japan) conducts Y2K operations dry run WITHOUT ELECTRICITY (Fri., May 21, 1999)

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FAQ Category: Military

Corroboration? U.S. Air Force (Japan) conducts Y2K operations dry run WITHOUT ELECTRICITY (Fri., May 21, 1999)

Source: Person-to-person conversation with U.S. Air Force E-8 that personally participated in this Y2K exercise.

All electrical power from generator external sources was switched OFF! There were no office computers, telecom, etc.

Field Communications contingency drill consisted of command field runners (e.g., HUMAN LEGS)!

Q.: Is there a source for the protocol of military field communications using field runners? (This might come in handy... too soon! )

Q.: Why wouldn't this sizeable military Y2K exercise be reported in the US media, along with all the other good/bad/ugly stuff about Y2K? (Journalists?)

Just wondering...

Regards, Bob Mangus

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-- Robert Mangus (rmangus@hotmail.com), May 26, 1999

Answers

"Q.: Why wouldn't this sizeable military Y2K exercise be reported in the US media...?"

Not hard to tell, as the Irish bards liked to say --

"If we don't look at it, it'll probably go away."

I remember doing just this when I was 5 years old lying in bed in the dark. Squinched my eyes shut tight. Lay precisely in the middle of the bed (that was the farthest I could get from anything under the bed.) I didn't know what they looked like and I didn't want to know. "They"? Don't ask. Horrible, hostile, hungry, that's all I knew. Yeah, I was scared.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), May 27, 1999.


Now you tell me! I would have slept better had I known they were under _your_ bed, cuz I thought they were under Mine!

Maybe, hopefully, the requirement for "field runners" will result in Cushman Motorscooter retooling again. :-)

-- A. Hambley (a.hambley@usa.net), May 27, 1999.


i don't imagine a bunt of Air Force troops will be actually running anywhere if they can help it. More like a lot of young, lower ranking airmen will put their privately-owned bicycles to use at work if assigned to "runner detail".

That is the way the guys stationed in Europe did things when war games held there included power outages and base-wide communications failures.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), May 28, 1999.


Yokota Air Force Base in Tokyo is a sprawling complex divided by a highway. Walking/running from one side of the base to the other could take an hour. Most of the USAF types I see here would be waddling for a few hours.

Misawa Air Force Base is smaller and fairly isolated in northern Japan.

I'l make a few calls and check it out.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), May 29, 1999.


VA hospitals (maybe admin sites too) have been doing short 3-hour exercises but can't get any info other than the power was out for three hours one morning last week due to same, test was done on pager system last weekend, and one other test of building systems was done. Does anyone who works at VA admin know how the tests went???

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), May 29, 1999.


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