America's Nuclear Arsenal Runs on 8 Inch Floppy Disks

[ZortMcGort11]

http://www.geek.com/chips/americas-nuclear-arsenal-still-runs-off-of-8-inch-floppy-discs-1592596/

I knew it.... security through obscurity!

People from all over the political spectrum are up in arms this week, following a 60 Minutes report on the state of the US nuclear arsenal. Particularly, the segment exposes the old and seemingly outdated technology that controls and underlies these most powerful of weapons. The phones are old, chunky physical types. The switch-boards have those big mechanical switches and flashy lights. And the paramount sin: Many of the records are kept on 8 inch floppy disks.

Its an odd thing, to see the plans and security information for the most destructive technology in history in a form most people associate with Reader Rabbit and The Oregon Trail. Still, is this really so bad? Certainly, the first two are hardly downsides; the sturdy, physical connections of the past are much more reliable in the sorts of doomsday scenarios that might see a nuclear weapon launch. Much like the interior of a submarine, these facilities should strive to be as low-tech as possible, without sacrificing safety or performance.

As to the floppies, they seem to be performing fairly well. Though Ben Richmond at Motherboard notes the degradation of information as a reason to upgrade, those complaints mostly extend to micro-fiches and films. The magnetic storage of a floppy disk is really quite long-lasting comparatively, though it is fragile and in need of proper handling.

The distinct upside of this sort of technology is that it makes compatibility harder for the enemy. Its harder to forge a format thats been out of date for 20 years, and hard to hack something that was installed before the internet left the militarys research labs. The job has not changed dramatically since these systems were first put in place: wait for a call, validate the call, target the missile, launch. Technologies on the front end of the nuclear process, in target acquisition and tracking, and on the back end, in propulsion and destructive power, have progressed immensely in the past 30 years. In some cases, though, keys, padlocks, and rotary phones are more than enough.

Now, of course upgrades will become necessary at some point, and frankly they really should upgrade that storage standard. However, simply maintaining the existing nuclear arsenal costs hundreds of billions per year. An across-the-board upgrade would be hard to justify at a time when nuclear fees are drawing eyes from the austerity crowd, and even usually pro-spending citizens rejoice at being able to put the costs of the Iraq War behind them. There are again forces calling for partial unilateral nuclear disarmament, if only because we no longer live in an era defined by the reach of nuclear bombs.

In the event of a nuclear catastrophe, its the satellites and smart-phones that will fail us. The rotary phones will be working just fine.

Edited May 1, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[submix8c]

Well, that's an odd title! Be aware that some of those floppies are still used to IML the AMDAHL/IBM/etc Mainframes, something that the author fails to understand. AFAIKR, the IML code on the floppies is used once and the drive can subsequently be used to store/retrieve data just like any other peripheral. And there's no real "magic" involved in it - simple IBM OS-based I/O.

(Yes, I have worked on those beasts before.)

FUD...

[bphlpt]

I still have an 8" floppy drive out in my garage. But I have no idea if it is covered in rust and/or rat droppings or not, and I have no idea if I still have any 8" floppies to use with it. I think I still have a 1200 baud modem as well, the old style where you acoustically connected your phone handset to it with rubber cups, probably along with other ancient no longer usable computer artifacts.

Cheers and Regards

[ZortMcGort11]

I still got a few hundred 3.5" floppies myself. Practically a necessity for DOS.

Shouldn't the guys at Geek have spelled disc as "disk" in the title?

I thought disk was short for diskette. Disc, I thought, was for CD's.... but maybe I'm mistaken. Guess not.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2300

What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk?"

Discs

A disc refers to optical media, such as an audio CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, or DVD-Video disc. Some discs are read-only (ROM), others allow you to burn content (write files) to the disc once (such as a CD-R or DVD-R, unless you do a multisession burn), and some can be erased and rewritten over many times (such as CD-RW, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM discs).

All discs are removable, meaning when you unmount or eject the disc from your desktop or Finder, it physically comes out of your computer.

Disks

A disk refers to magnetic media, such as a floppy disk, the disk in your computer's hard drive, an external hard drive. Disks are always rewritable unless intentionally locked or write-protected. You can easily partition a disk into several smaller volumes, too.

Disks are usually sealed inside a metal or plastic casing (often, a disk and its enclosing mechanism are collectively known as a "hard drive").

They might have to revoke their geek status, because they clearly failed to make that distiniction :-( Edited May 1, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[Flasche]

I still got a few hundred 3.5" floppies myself. Practically a necessity for DOS.

Shouldn't the guys at Geek have spelled disc as "disk" in the title?

I thought disk was short for diskette. Disc, I thought, was for CD's.... but maybe I'm mistaken. Guess not.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2300

What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk?"

Discs

A disc refers to optical media, such as an audio CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, or DVD-Video disc. Some discs are read-only (ROM), others allow you to burn content (write files) to the disc once (such as a CD-R or DVD-R, unless you do a multisession burn), and some can be erased and rewritten over many times (such as CD-RW, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM discs).

All discs are removable, meaning when you unmount or eject the disc from your desktop or Finder, it physically comes out of your computer.

Disks

A disk refers to magnetic media, such as a floppy disk, the disk in your computer's hard drive, an external hard drive. Disks are always rewritable unless intentionally locked or write-protected. You can easily partition a disk into several smaller volumes, too.

Disks are usually sealed inside a metal or plastic casing (often, a disk and its enclosing mechanism are collectively known as a "hard drive").

They might have to revoke their geek status, because they clearly failed to make that distiniction :-(

Maybe you should go teach them the difference ; )

The government still using dos didn't surprise me. The Navy still uses Dos, though they use if for food programs instead of nuke controls...

[Guest]

I thought disk was short for diskette. Disc, I thought, was for CD's.... but maybe I'm mistaken. Guess not.

It's different in the UK. The author, Graham Templeton, is Canadian. The queen is still on their currency, so he could spell it either way and be correct.

[ZortMcGort11]

LOL. Okay, I guess I won't write to him then.

Personally, however, I'm going to continue refering to them as optical storage discs and magnetic storage disks. Even though it doesn't matter. The spelling is stuck in my mind because when I used to buy boxes of floppy disks, the box would always say "diskettes," not "discettes."

According to my "Compact American Dictionary of Computer Words" (copyright 1998 Houghton Mifflin Company) the term disc and disk are interchangeable and mean the same thing.

Edited May 2, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[Guest]

I'm with you, LostInSpace2012. Disc is for optical, and disk is for magnetic. 1998 seems a bit out of date. Too much has changed since then.

[Tripredacus]

To make matters worse, a DISK (in mathematics) is the surface area surrounded by a circle. This entire object (the DISK and the Circle) is called a DISC. Also Wikipedia says this:

A disc (British English) or disk (American English), from Latin discus which itself derives from Greek δίσκος, is a flat circular object.

The terms we are used to as in Hard Disk Drive may even be outdated? Isn't the usage of Disk in that name referring to the platter itself and the drive is the mechanism that spins the platter? Of course now we have HDDs with multiple platters, so should it be Hard Disks Drive now?

Either way, the only one that is really at fault is the SSD. It has no disks and it has no drives.

[jaclaz]

I still have an 8" floppy drive out in my garage. But I have no idea if it is covered in rust and/or rat droppings or not, and I have no idea if I still have any 8" floppies to use with it. I think I still have a 1200 baud modem as well, the old style where you acoustically connected your phone handset to it with rubber cups, probably along with other ancient no longer usable computer artifacts.

Cheers and Regards

Thanks a lot.

You just gave me a very good comparison term to use with my wife about my having 5"1/4 drives and 14400 Modems/Faxes in the garage.

jaclaz

[puntoMX]

You should start about all those unused shoes and clothes  !




 

[jaclaz]

You should start about all those unused shoes and clothes  !

 

You must be not married since many years , or you are not yet familiar with "marriage correct" jargon. those are not "unused", they are "saved for special occasions".

 

You know, hypothetical things like "What if William and Kate invite us to Buckingham Palace for dinner?"

 

You actually have to learn to live with the "saved for special occasions" stuff, as it might mitigate the otherwise disastrous "I have nothing to wear" effect .

 

jaclaz