For critical systems, reliability, predictability, consistency, and long-term performance data are more important than modernization. It makes perfect sense that a system like this would lag the leading edge of technology significantly. It is ok if the technology has problems, even if it has high failure rates, as long as the failure rates are predictable - then you can write procedures around them. Floppy disks don’t exactly offer bulletproof reliability, but they are well understood - and also you can generally just toss them on a desk or in a drawer without worrying too much about incidental damage.
You want this kind of technology to be so simple and dependable that you don’t have to think about it, it just works as expected. It also massively simplifies staff training and procedure documentation if the relevant bits of technology don’t change very often - until of course those bits become so outdated that the procedures for getting them to interface with newer systems becomes its own mess.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
This guy ITs.
This is at least as disturbing as it is reassuring.
FAA information display systems to be floppy-free at 435 sites by end of 2028.
not so fast!
Be more disturbed that the Minuteman III missiles, one leg of the nuclear triad, rely on the big 8 inch floppies in their launch control systems.
The replacement missiles will not enter service until the “early 2030s.”
Not the Onion… huh
Let me get a 5.25” drive
If it’s still using floppies in 2026, there’s likely a damn good reason. Nobody is keeping around something vulnerable to antiCMOS.b for no reason.
It is intentional. It solves a problem. And we’re going to regret this fuckery.
Failure rates and avenues that are predictable and can be operationally regulated around. That’s a form of reliability that they want in that system. That’s it. Plus it costs money to update things like that.
Uh.
Wut.
They have now upgraded to zip drives.
Neat. Can I have the old ones? It’ll go well with my water modeling software from the 80s that I got from an old company trashing their old stuff.
