Actually, the department isn’t in the 21st Century even now, as it has been using a 1970s-era database system called UADPS, or ‘‘Uniform Automated Data Processing System.” Replacing UADPS with the modern Relational Supply (RSupply) database is why Pax River’s supply operation will spend two weeks in the days of ‘‘Leave It to Beaver” and (young) Elvis.

‘‘In that two-week period, only high priority requisitions will go through,” said Assistant Aviation Division Supply Officer Scott Jaques. ‘‘We’re asking all our customers to get their normal requirements in between now and March 30th. After the 30th and before April 13th, they should only order emergency supplies.”

In other words, if you run out of staples in that two weeks, there’s always Staples.

In the current system, according to Jaques, ‘‘When you as a customer order something, we put that into UADPS, which in turn sends the requisition out into the supply system. We are one of the last to be changed over to RSupply. Only China Lake and the Fleet Industrial Supply Centers will be left on UADPS.”

Nearly every command at Pax River will be affected by the changeover. One that will not is the Health Clinic, which uses the Bureau of Medicine supply system. ‘‘Anyone that uses the Pax River Supply Department as the point of entry for their supplies will have to deal with this,” said Jaques.

The two weeks are necessary because ‘‘it takes that long to convert everything that is in the UADPS database over to RSupply. That includes our inventory, all of the requisitions that are on file, and all the stock records we carry to support the aviation customers,” he said.

Complicating the transfer is that UADPS runs on the obsolete COBOL operating system. Getting everything into the Windows-based RSupply is not a case of simply writing a filter so, for example, Excel can read an old Lotus 1-2-3 file. Lotus and Excel use compatible operating systems (DOS and Windows). UADPS and RSupply don’t.

‘‘A dry run on the conversion has been done by SPAWAR (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command) in Norfolk, who are the Microsoft of RSupply,” Jaques said. ‘‘They’ve been taking files out of our database and doing a mock conversion to get everything working before they bring it up here.”

The impact during the two weeks will be slightly different, depending on which requisition system a command uses to submit requirements. Naval aviation commands such as squadrons use NALCOMIS (Naval Aviation Logistics Command Management Information System), while all others use a program named ‘‘Sigma.”

Both system interfaces with UADPS will go down on March 30, but NALCOMIS comes back up on Monday, April 2. Sigma doesn’t come back up until April 13, Jaques said. Sigma customers will have to hand-carry urgent requisitions to the Supply Department.

In both cases, however, it’s back to the 1950s when it reaches the Supply Department. Supply employees will first check a March 30 printout to see if the item is available on base. If it isn’t on the list, there will be a manual check in the warehouse. ‘‘If we don’t have an aircraft part here, we’ll be phoning up the road to see if they do,” said Jaques.

Emergencies will be handled as quickly as possible, but even then, he added, ‘‘Doing it on paper is slower than on the computer.”

At the end of the two weeks, according to Jaques, the Supply Department will enter a new and simpler world. ‘‘We can take care of RSupply ourselves instead of having to depend on the IT departments at San Diego or Mechanicsburg (Pa.) to keep UADPS going,” he said.

RSupply is also the system used by the fleet, so ‘‘when Sailors come here from ships or other stations, they are used to RSupply, so training is much easier. It only takes about a day to get a Sailor up to speed. It takes weeks in UADPS.”

The simplicity also means a 75 percent cost reduction for use of the automation, because there are fewer steps, said Jaques. ‘‘We can manage better, because RSupply gives us a variety of reports that UADPS does not.”

For the first time, the Supply Department will be able to use bar codes in the warehouses. ‘‘When we do inventory now, it’s strictly manual,” Jaques said. ‘‘You get a printed listing, go to the location, count what’s there and write it down. Then you go back and punch it all into UADPS manually.”

RSupply ‘‘gives us scanning capability. You simply scan the items, plug the scanner into a computer, and the scanner puts it into RSupply. We can’t do that now.”