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Last October the U.S. Military replaced the eight 1970s floppy disks controlling all nuclear missiles. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/10/19/us-mi
by lowdose 7y ago
Last October the U.S. Military replaced the eight 1970s floppy disks controlling all nuclear missiles.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/10/19/us-military-to-replace-1970s-floppy-disks-controlling-nuclear-missiles/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/10/19/us-milita...
- paulie_a 7y agoThey had no need to upgrade. If anything they had a massive need to downsize the inventory of weapons. Plus the security protection was shockingly irresponsible. The code was all zeros
- kortilla 7y agoDownsizing is orthogonal to needing to upgrade. You still need to maintain whatever amount remains and that could call for software upgrades in light of a new issue.
- asveikau 7y agoFloppy disks physically degraded pretty easily. Seems like it could be a safety issue.
- adventured 7y agoThe code hasn't been all zeros for 40 to 50 years. It was all zeros on some of the arsenal for about 15 years from ~1962 until ~1977.
- paulie_a 7y agoThat was clearly a great 15 years of the cold war to have all zeros as a nuclear weapon code.
- jjeaff 7y agoI've heard that the unspoken truth of those launch sites is they are just being maintained for lack of orders to dismantle and that even in event of a nuclear war, they couldn't/wouldn't be used safely. The majority of the US's strategic nuclear arsenal would be fired from one of our nuclear equipped submarines.