Army Reserve soldiers will see their paychecks delayed just weeks before Christmas, with one Reserve officer claims that “malicious activity” has scrambled the software the Army Reserve uses to manage personnel and pay.
The Army Reserve acknowledged on the Facebook page of its Medical Readiness and Training Command unit that paycheck processing would be delayed.
“The Army Reserve is working to resolve technical issues affecting the business software suite that processes pay for Army Reserve Soldiers. Soldiers can expect slower than normal payment for duty they have completed. However, in an effort to minimize those delays, the Army Reserve is using a manual pay process and is processing Soldier pay as quickly as possible.This does not affect [Active Guard Reserve] pay.”
No further details were provided in the message, but according to an email sent by one Army Reserve officer and obtained by The Daily Caller, the reason for the slow-down could be more than a mere glitch.
“RLAS is down due to Malicious activity in the computer language which affected the RLAS Program,” wrote the officer. “No PII was leaked or at risk.”
RLAS, or Regional Language Application Software, manages a wide variety of personnel functions for the Army Reserve, including issuing pay, promotions and awards. PII stands for personally identifiable information.
The Reserve officer who issued the email wrote that it is estimated that it will be between two and three weeks before reservists will be paid. And when they are, it will be manually rather than electronically through RLAS.
The officer apologized for the delay, “particularly at this time of the year.”
A contract for management of the Reserve’s RLAS was recently awarded to Akira Technologies. Representatives of the firm could not be reached for comment.
“At this point, it’s not known what caused it to stop functioning properly,” Reserve spokesman Lt. Col. William Ritter told the Army Times.
He said that besides circumventing RLAS to manually pay soldiers, personnel are also being asked to manually sign in for monthly drill.
TheDC’s requests for comment from the Army Reserve office of public affairs about the alleged malicious threat were not returned.
