US Military Uses 8-Inch Floppy Disks To Coordinate Nuclear Force Operations (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNBC: A new report reveals the U.S. Defense Department is still using 8-inch floppy disks in a computer system that coordinates the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces. The Defense Department's 1970s-era IBM Series/1 Computer and long-outdated floppy disks handle functions related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft, according to the new Governmental Accountability Office report. The report shows how outdated IT systems are being used to handle important functions related to the nation's taxpayers, federal prisoners and military veterans, as well as to the America's nuclear umbrella. "Federal legacy IT systems are becoming increasingly obsolete: Many use outdated software languages and hardware parts that are unsupported," the report found. "Agencies reported using several systems that have components that are, in some cases, at least 50 years old." From the report: "GAO pointed out that aging systems include the Treasury Department's 'individual master file,' which is the authoritative data source for individual taxpayers. It's used to assess taxes and generates refunds. That file 'is written in assembly language code -- a low-level computer code that is difficult to write and maintain -- and operates on an IBM mainframe,' the report said." The report also mentioned that several other departments, such as the departments of Treasury, Commerce, Health and Human Services and the Veterans' Administration, "reported using 1980s and 1990s Microsoft operating systems that stopped being supported by the vendor more than a decade ago."

Comments

It's hopeless

[realmolo]

This kind of "back-end" software is EXACTLY the kind of thing that contractors DREAM of. Nobody knows how it works, and the general public never has to see it, so they can't complain about it being a piece-of-shit that they paid for.

It's just like the air traffic control system "upgrade" they've been working on for nearly 30 years. The contractors have ZERO incentive to ever provide a working product. Much better to keep in in development forever.

I'm not one of those "government can't do anything right" people, but this is one of those things that is just a tailor-made pork-barrel disaster. I see why they don't want to even bother trying.

Re:It's hopeless

[holophrastic]

Seems like a good investment to me. Operational for fifty years, and never been hacked. Seems like your government did everything right -- oh how I wish that had continued to be true.

Re:It's hopeless

[Kjella]

1. Do NOT use a contractor. They have a vested interest in bloat and delay.
2. Use your own subordinates so they have skin in the game, and their future raises and promotions depend on the success of the project.

1. Depends. Small contractors have often been the ones pushing to cut through the fluff and get real specs and deliverables on the table because they know the budget is fixed, not delivering makes them look bad and if they don't it'll just fizzle like so many projects we have that are ongoing but never really materialize. "Too big to fail" projects that'll be funded next year too unless hell freezes over are different, but then you're often screwed because you really don't have the skills or resources in-house. In fact big projects almost always fail because of the next one.
2. For the most part, that simply can't happen. There's no authority to make incentive or performance-based pay, I have my pay grade and overtime pay. As for raises, if I were to get any significantly more pay than anyone with less education, experience and tenure it'd raise hell with unions and whatnot. And it's often the same with promotions, you'll get promoted when it's your turn because if they pass up a candidate that's better on paper there's actually a formal complaint process. Same with public procurement processes, nobody's free to do what they feel is best for the bottom line.

As for 3-5. they're generally good ideas. If you give people too much time and money to try solving every problem forever, they'll sit around making grand plans and often dismissing the reasons why the current system has become such a mess as bad design, when in reality it's a messy world out there and kludges are our way to cope.

5. Avoid (...) even announcing the project until you have something working.

Sadly I've found this is the easiest way to get something done, particularly if it's the type of solution that's not great but less terrible than the one we have. They say learn to walk before you run, but nobody here seems to have heard it. Every time there's a project to get on our feet, somebody must come in and crush it because it's not good enough. Which usually means we're crawling around for a few more years while they argue about their master plan to simultaneously win the 100m dash and the marathon at the Olympics.

I'm so tired of pie-in-the-sky plans that end up a mad dash to deliver the barest minimum because somebody finally put the foot down, basically throwing away 90% of the work because there was no time to even try implementing anything remotely like it. There should be like a shot clock, if you've spent 30% of your budget start implementing and figure out where the rubber meets the road. Anything else leads to meaningless exercises like trying to estimate a solution where we haven't even decided on the principle for the solution, much less made an actual design and broken it down into work that needs doing and could reasonably be estimated.

So What?

[plopez]

They've been stable for decades. I'll take master files on floppy disks and programs written by people who cared over "eventually consistent" databases developed by "just good enough" monkeys any day.

Re:So What?

[nuckfuts]

Yes and no. I would not advocate changing operating systems simply because they "stopped being supported by the vendor more than a decade ago". After all, if your needs have been met for decades by something like MS-DOS 6.1 or Windows 3.11, what "support" would you looking for from Microsoft today?

Physical devices are a completely different issue, however. Floppy drives and floppy disks WILL wear out and fail. Maybe these agencies have a stockpile of spares, or maybe someone is still manufacturing 8" floppies to sell to the government for an arm and a leg, but barring that, good luck sourcing replacements for your antique computer hardware when it fails.

Re:So it's air gapped. That's good, right?

[thinkwaitfast]

There's probably more rationale here than many realize.

I'd doubt it. More like,

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re: So it's air gapped. That's good, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what exactly is wrong with that?

New shiny stuff is much scarier...