After Half A Century, US Finally Stopped Using Floppy Disks In Missile Launches

In 2014, people in the United States was shocked at receiving a piece of news. From a new segment on ’60 Minutes,’ they learned that the US military was controlling the whole network of nuclear missile systems with floppy disks.

That means while the missiles could wipe out various cities completely at one time, the US military was relying on an ancient computer network from the 1970s, with floppy disks as large as 8 inches, to get launch orders.

There’s no denying that the system is too worrisome to be around for that long. Anyway, thankfully, they have finally upgraded the system.

According to an announcement from the US strategic command, the floppy drives have been replaced with a solid-state digital solution that's highly secure, citing Lt. Col. Jason talking to c4isrnet.com. However, they will still use it with the old computer network, which is included in the original network that was set up way back years ago. The system in question is SACCS, short for Strategic Automated Command and Control System. In nuclear command centers, military personnel makes use of this system for sending messages of emergency actions to field forces.

The US still uses these systems because they were set up long before the Internet even appeared. And as they have no IP addresses, they cannot be hacked. Nevertheless, the systems have become harder to maintain over the years, and if they break, there won’t be anything ready for replacement. Mostly, it takes technicians hours to fix parts on their own using microscopes.

But the Department of Defense planned to make a replacement for the IBM Series/1 SACCS by 2017’s end to update its solutions for storing data, desktop terminals, portable terminals, and port expansion processors. It’s not clear if the replacement has been done yet, but with the inclusion of SSD technology, the speed of the entire system should increase.