Us Nukes And Missiles Controlled By Floppy Disks
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A programme used for controlling some of America's ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers is controlled from a forty-year-old computer which still uses floppy disks, reveals a report.
The (GAO) Government Accountability Office, said that the computer sends and receives emergency action messages for United States nuclear forces, and then stores this data on 8-inch floppy disks , which were first introduced in the nineteen seventies.
An upgrade to a secure digital substitute is set to be completed in 2017 to "address obsolescence concerns", as per a Pentagon spokeswoman.
"This system remains in use because, in short, it still works," says Lt Col Valerie Henderson.
The IBM Series/1 computer, which was first launched while Gerald Ford was in the White House, may only be fully supplanted by the end of the decade.
The humble floppy disk is a far-fetched memory for most modern computer nerds – remembered as an icon to click on for saving documents after it was fundamentally discontinued in the mid-Y2Ks.
Detectives have criticised the US government for spending three times more on maintaining these aging, prehistoric dinosaur like computer systems than it does on modernisation.
The Government Accountability Office says that the state invested $61.2bn into maintaining these ld machines, some of which are more than half a century year old, as opposed to just $19.2bn (£13bn) on the "development and enhancement" of newer technology.
It cautioned the government "runs the risk of maintaining systems that have outlived their effectiveness" in its non-partisan statement.
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