Posted on 10/18/2019 7:25:22 AM PDT by ShadowAce
The military announced Thursday it has retired the 8-inch floppy disks that were used to receive a presidential order to fire nuclear missiles.
Lt. Col. Jason Rossi told c4isrnet.com that it has retired the floppy disks used on its dated 1970s computer with a “highly-secure solid-state digital storage solution.”
The computer — called Strategic Automated Command and Control System, or SACCS — is an old system designed to receive nuclear force action messages and is considered unhackable because it predates the creation of the internet.
“You can’t hack something that doesn’t have an IP address. It’s a very unique system — it is old, and it is very good,” Mr. Rossi said.
The Department of Defense said in 2016 it would replace the SACCS computer and “update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017.”
The Air Force hasn’t shared whether it followed through on that promise.
While the system is old, the Air Force believes the age of the system makes nuclear launches safer, and a new computer system could jeopardize that.
“You have to be able to certify that an adversary can’t take control of that weapon, that the weapon will be able to do what it’s supposed to do when you call on it,” said Dr. Werner J.A. Dahm, chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, back in 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I did maintenance on the Minuteman III for 8 years in the 70's and 80's and it was the same system. It was solid and SIMPLE. It was not tied to the internet in any way, couldn't be hacked, was survivable in an EMP environment and had good checks and balances with human interfaces. The only real reason to leave it behind is that it is impossible to get 5 1/4 in disks anymore.
Lol, I was curious about that too! Another fantastic use of taxpayer’s money... It never ends...
In 2006 the Mk 12 R/S test set that I used in 1972 was still in use at VAFB.
We've been using the Internet (and especially GPS) for our national defense for a long time now.
Same here i was a field service IT guy back in the late 90’s early 2000’s.
Been to MANY corporations here in MA and by far the most backwards old tech places were government offices i visited.
IRS, Secret Service, FBI, Social security, local police, jails, prisons, etc.
OLD filthy crappy machines...unbelievable.
You see all this high tech stuff on all these cop shows?
Don’t believe it.
I work in nuclear command and control these days. Remember how long we've had these systems and understand how low their priority has been for modernization for both "if it works, then why change it?" and "security through obscurity" reasons.
omg, I’ll donate my old winXPs if they need them..
worked great until the click of death ?
They have replaced the 8” floppies with 5.25” floppies
Both were initially deployed for military use long before the general public could use them.
My concern was reaction times. Kind of like the difference of latency between a heliograph and smoke signals. Historically the difference was the determining factor in conflicts.
EMP proof, ya?
Nope. The Click of Death was the so-called zip drives.
Those 20mb cartridges were rugged and trouble free.
That more has to do with the decision-making and force direction functions. Once the decision is made, there’s time.
It’s pretty much all over for us at that point anyway.
He's got a point there.
thanks...I had the zip drive :(
“Another mystery is WHERE would you be buying these in 2017?”
Defense contracts do it, but probably at a significant cost. DoD pays companies not to deprecate things. For one NORAD system, we paid HP to keep 32k magnetic core memory parts for us, and those things cost about $65k a piece well into the 1990’s.
“along with GPS”
Actually, GPS, called Navstar, was created for national defense and was in use long before civilians got to use it.
OMG they were still using floppy discs, REALLY, LOL, LOL, LOL,
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