France reports bug in military satellite system

PARIS, Jan 1 (Reuters) - The Y2K computer bug has hit France's Syracuse II military satellite system but has had no operational effect, the defence ministry said on Saturday. The bug struck the automatic fault detection programmes at ground liaison stations linked by the Syracuse II satellite system, it said in a statement without giving further details.

Syracuse II, which is shared between the military and France Telecom, is a system of four satellites launched in 1996. It is the main communications channel linking the military command with French forces in Kosovo.

"This disfunctioning has no operational impact and a way to get around it has already been put into use," it said. "Programmers are developing a definitive solution."

The Y2K problem is caused by computers that identify years only by their last two digits misreading 2000 as 1900.

Syracuse II was launched as part of a drive that France began after the 1991 Gulf War to develop a military satellite system independent of the United States. The first two of the satellites are due to go out of service next year.

The third generation of Syracuse satellites, due to be shared with the German military, will be put into orbit in 2003. French officials suggest it could eventually evolve into a full-blown NATO satellite system. ______________________________

-- kc (kc@yahoo.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

Interesting...presumably a system rather important to the French. I wonder why this problem wasn't identified, fixed, and tested well before rollover?

"Programmers are developing a definitive solution." Anyone know what a "definitive" solution is?...or how long it will take to do it and implement it????

Will we see more of this type of failure being discovered?

-- Norm Harrold (nharrold@tymewyse.com), January 01, 2000.