Why Floppy Computer Disks Are Still Used In U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos

A long-rage ground-based missile silo is pictured July 17, 2007, at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Credit: Reuters/Kacper Pempel

U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos Still Use Floppy Disks, But Have Battlestar Galactica-Style Cyber Security -- Lily Hay Newman, National Post/Slate

You’d probably expect to encounter all sorts of crazy technology in a U.S. Air Force nuclear silo. One you might not expect: floppy disks.

Leslie Stahl of CBS’s 60 Minutes reported from a Wyoming nuclear control center for a segment that aired on Sunday, and the Cold War-era tech she found is pretty amazing. But it also makes sense. The government built facilities for the Minuteman missiles in the 1960s and 1970s, and though the missiles have been upgraded numerous times to make them safer and more reliable, the bases themselves haven’t changed much. And there isn’t a lot of incentive to upgrade them. ICBM forces commander Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein told Stahl that the bases have extremely tight IT and cyber security, because they’re not Internet-connected and they use such old hardware and software.

In many ways, it’s a technique similar to that used by the title ship from the TV show Battlestar Galactica, where the ship was saved from a defence-disabling virus because its computers weren’t networked.

Read more ....

My Comment: I would love to know how the Russians and Chinese operate in their nuclear silos.