Have you used any floppy disks recently? Like in the last ten years? Apple has retired floppy drives on their computers, but the government has not retired them from their nuclear weapons system.
Well, not everyone has retired floppy disks. According to a recent government report, there are some legacy computers that are still part of the U.S. Nuclear Command. Many government systems are still using legacy technology. The Pentagon still uses 8-inch floppy disks to operate our nuclear weapons.
The Government Accounting Office said this in a report this week:
“Legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete. For instance, [the Department of] Defense is still using 8-inch floppy disks in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces.”
The report actually had to clarify what floppy disks are. That is a bad sign:
“Introduced in the 1970s, the 8-inch floppy disk is a disk-based storage medium that holds 80 kilobytes of data. In comparison, a single modern flash drive can contain data from the equivalent of more than 3.2 million floppy disks.”
If they need to clarify what floppy disks are, that means that they need to upgrade.
The Pentagon’s Strategic Automated Command and Control System is powered by a 53-year-old network with an IBM Series computer. It cost $10,000-$100,000 when it came out in 1976. It has the same power as today’s coffee machines. The 8-inch floppy disks hold only 500 KB of data. It would take four of those to store one MP3 file.
This old computer system is used to:
“…handle functions related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft.”
The system is programmed in COBOL and FORTRAN, which were invented in the 1950s.
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson said:
“This system remains in use because, in short, it still works. However, to address obsolescence concerns, the floppy drives are scheduled to be replaced with secure digital devices by the end of 2017.”
It just seems weird that our most dangerous weapons are being controlled by computer systems from the 1970s.
Featured image by David Smith via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
