Update Complete: U.S. Nuclear Weapons No Longer Need Floppy Disks

Summary

Rest easy, people of Earth: The United States’ nuclear arsenal will no longer rely on a computer system that uses eight-inch floppy disks, in an update the Defense Department has cast as a step into the future but which some observers might be surprised to learn was required at all.The system, called Strategic Automated Command and Control System, or SACCS, “is still in use today but no longer uses floppy disks,” David Faggard, a spokesman for the Air Force Global Strike Command, which manages the Air Force portion of the arsenal, said in an email. “Air Force Global Strike Command is committed to modernizing for the future.”The update is part of a broader overhaul of the United States’ atomic weapons that began under President Barack Obama and has continued under President Trump. The move away from floppy disks was completed in June but was not widely reported at the time. It was reported last week by C4ISRNET, a website that covers military technology.“The Air Force completed a replacement of the aging SACCS floppy drives with a highly secure solid-state digital storage solution in June,” Justin Oakes, a spokesman for the Eighth Air Force, said in an email. “This replacement effort exponentially increased message storage capacity and operator response times for critical nuclear command and control message receipt and processing.”The role of floppy disks in the command and control operations of the nation’s nuclear arsenal was highlighted in a 2016 report from the United States Government Accountability Office. It said the disks were used in a system that “coordinates the operational functions of the nation’s nuclear forces.”The report said that the Strategic Automated Command and Control System ran on an IBM Series/1 computer — a piece of hardware that dates to the 1970s — and used eight-inch floppy disks to manage weapons like intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft.The report warned that the Pentagon was one of the several...