The U.S. Nuclear Program Still Uses Eight-Inch Floppy Disks

The U.S. Nuclear Program Still Uses Eight-Inch Floppy Disks

Where does the United States store data for its nuclear systems? If the question brings to mind visions of high-tech storage centers, cloud computing or solid-state drives, think again—as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports for the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Defense still uses floppy disks for its Strategic Automated Command and Control System.

The system, which serves as the primary means for transmitting emergency messages to the country’s nuclear missile forces and other worldwide offensive and defensive systems, still relies on eight-inch floppy disks that hold 80 kilobytes of data. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the program relies on an IBM Series I computer from the 1970s.

“The system remains in use because, in short, it still works,” a Pentagon spokesperson told the Agence France Presse. She added that by 2017, the disks will be replaced by “secure digital devices” and that, by 2020, the Pentagon will fully replace the command system.

And at this point, floppy disks offer something else to the defense industry: security. Since the technology is so old and few modern machines can handle them, floppy disks are strangely secure. In 2014, General Jack Weinstein told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl that DOD “cyber engineers” had determined that “the system is extremely safe and extremely secure the way it’s developed.” At the time, Smithsonian.com tracked the growth of the nuclear stockpile, much of which is as old as the disks themselves.