Air Force finally retires 8-inch floppies from missile launch control system
“Solid state storage” replaces IBM Series/1’s floppy drive.
Ex forwarded this article to me via a couple of her ninjas (We Admins are sharing like that. I’ll hold safe her ninjas as if they were my very own).
Despite the grin-factor, I imagine 8 inch floppies are a pretty robust format to last the test of time, and just lock them up in a Faraday cage storage bin and wa-la! Instant EMP protection. No, best change to a digital format and watch what happens when you forget if you are big or small endian, or just drop a significant bit altogether. Oh hell, just go to the Cloud like the Navy did, and now my CAC reader at home is an interesting, if quite useless paperweight on my desk.
Now where was that IT guy’s phone number? What? On the cloud, of course.
SEAN GALLAGHER
Five years ago, a CBS 60 Minutes report publicized a bit of technology trivia many in the defense community were aware of: the fact that eight-inch floppy disks were still used to store data critical to operating the Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missile command, control, and communications network. The system, once called the Strategic Air Command Digital Network (SACDIN), relied on IBM Series/1 computers installed by the Air Force at Minuteman II missile sites in the 1960s and 1970s.
Those floppy disks have now been retired. Despite the contention by the Air Force at the time of the 60 Minutes report that the archaic hardware offered a cybersecurity advantage, the service has completed an upgrade to what is now known as the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS), as Defense News reports. SAACS is an upgrade that swaps the floppy disk system for what Lt. Col. Jason Rossi, commander of the Air Force’s 595th Strategic Communications Squadron, described as a “highly secure solid state digital storage solution.” The floppy drives were fully retired in June.
But the IBM Series/1 computers remain, in part because of their reliability and security. And it’s not clear whether other upgrades to “modernize” the system have been completed. Air Force officials have acknowledged network upgrades that have enhanced the speed and capacity of SACCS’ communications systems, and a Government Accountability Office report in 2016 noted that the Air Force planned to “update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017.” But it’s not clear how much of that has been completed.
While SACCS is reliable, it is obviously expensive and difficult to maintain when it fails. There are no replacement parts available, so all components must be repaired—a task that may require hours manipulating parts under a microscope. Civilian Air Force employees with years of experience in electronics repairs handle the majority of the work. But the code that runs the system is still written by enlisted Air Force programmers. Nothing a robust regimen of DMS/MS* System Test and Evaluation won’t fix.
The entire article may be viewed here: Ars Technica
*Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages, aka “Form, Fit and Function.” These words, when uttered by the program office are guaranteed to make any steelie-eyed System’s Test Engineer cry like a school girl.
Or point and laugh. “Hey Dave, remember how many flights it REALLY took to FF&F that receiver on the P-8?”
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force
This website is still run on 8″ floppies though, right?
That’s a Management question, Mason. I’m a mere WordPress user, and a slow one at that.
No, they are still using those giant tape reels, and the server is the size of a nuclear bunker.
Yep, floppies aren’t going away anytime soon. Lots of plants/factories have older equipment from the 80s or 90s.
Man, those Commodore 64 games on floppies were a blast back in the day. Track & Field !!!
Remember Gunship for C64? That game used to give medals – i earned two Silver Stars and a DFC on there when I was 13!
Ha!
In the Wild Wide World of Poserdom, those medals would qualify to be proudly displayed on a leather vest.
I never thought of that! Now I need to buy a vest!😁😁😁😁😁
As did “F-15 Strike Eagle III” for the PC. (1994)
Off topic. The World series is tied 3-3. Nats win 7-2 tonight to force 7th game. Game 7 tomorrow. No home field advantage – the road team has won all the games so far. Back to regular scheduled programming.
Back in the day we had a new guy in the office
that would put his desk phone in the drawer with his floppies everytime he left for lunch.
So we called his phone while he was gone.
Little prick right out of college.
Turned out ok after the FNG wore off.
Eight inch floppies were already gone when I was going to college in ’73, and 5 1/2″ floppies were being replaced by the 3 1/2″ .
Now, to find any of the above, you’ll have a difficult search.
I think your timeline is a bit off. These sources say the 5 1/4″ floppy didn’t exist until the mid-1970s, and that the industry didn’t settle on the 3 1/2″ form factor until 1982. The 3 1/2″ drive doesn’t seem to have come into commercial use until some years later (Apple and IBM both released their versions in commercial products in the mid-1980s).
https://geekandsundry.com/the-history-of-the-floppy-disk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#History
That matches my memories from the late 1970s and 1980s. I clearly remember 8″ floppy drives still in use (but not particularly common) on CP/M and DOS machines (most had 5 1/4″ diskettes by then), and the 3.5″ floppy coming into widespread use during the 1980s in commercially available systems.
FWIW: I’ve owned and used all three. (smile)
8″ floppies were already relics by the early 1980s. The original IBM PC from 1980(?) used 5.25″, which was already the standard used by Apple II et al. 3.5″ floppies arrived with the original 128K Macintosh released in 1984.
Trash-80 Model III was da bomb w/ 2 x 5.25″ drives built-in in ’80. (Model II still had 8″ before that.) 5MB external hard drive (awe inspiring at the time) for the Model III appeared in ’83.
I did say that 8″ floppy drives were not terribly common. However, they were definitely still in use – particularly in academic and hobbyist environments – in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
You are correct about McIntosh being the first production machine with a 3.5″ floppy.
typo?
To many SARC complainants about an 8 inch floppy in the office?
And Sauron laughed as WOPR was replaced by Skynet.
Please forgive my mixing of movie metaphors. . . .
So the REPLACEMENT is “difficult to maintain when it fails” and has “no replacement parts available”?! How the actual F does that happen? Isn’t it a new system? “Civilian Air Force employees with years of experience in electronics repairs” – We are talking about computer systems, yes? Most COTS (Commercial off the shelf) systems are near disposable. They built something that was complicated and can’t be repaired? What the hell?
It’s probably an issue of spare parts availability and old technology vice being overly complicated.
Ever try to find repair parts for a really old car – say a 1953 Studebaker? Or any other car whose manufacturer has quit supporting model years earlier than 19XX? Even finding oil filters and spark plugs can be a problem.
I’d also guess code certification/accreditation/whatever the correct term is these days may have played a part in explaining why the system wasn’t ever simply replaced. Getting mission-critical software through certification and accreditation simply isn’t easy.
I’m with you in regard to old systems. Can’t get repair parts, old school electronics repair – I get it! What I was referring to is the fact that the problem of repair problems was in reference to the NEW system!!
“The service has completed an upgrade to what is now known as the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS)”
“While SACCS is reliable, it is obviously expensive and difficult to maintain”
Would you want an off the shelf, near disposable Chinese computer (with free built in back doors) running our ICBM’s?
No, but I’m not really making that case. The fact is, however, that whatever the expensive, hard to fix system is, it probably is using computers and networking gear from questionable sources in any case. Hard to get around, sad to say.
The “System” may be new and beauteous, but the constituent parts and subsystems are evidently not.
If it’s from the ’60s and 70s, there aren’t that many sources, and China was not one of them. Updating the software may also have been prohibitively expensive and problematic. A lot of it, maybe most of it, is probably 8-bit format and may not work at all on modern equipment.
There were a lot of computer languages and proprietary equipment standards used by DoD back then, and each combination and permutation may have had little quirks which are probably better left undisturbed.
“Better the devil you know than the one you do not know”.Think of the Boeing 737 Max software “improvements”.
So does that mean I have to upgrade to Windows 3.11?
Does that mean they’ll have to suffer through Windows Vista in 2028?
I remember 8 inch floppies. I was using them on a Compugraphic typesetter, a whiz of a machine. It was like driving a spaceship through a wormhole. Then I went to 5 inch discs on a different typesetter. Nothing like the old clackety-clack hot lead Mergenthaler typesetter. Now THAT was a machine!
I still have a boatload of 3.5 discs, and a floppy reader. Some things never die. 😉
Speaking of clackety-clack, I love the smell of ditto machine fluid in the morning…
I see your 3.5″ disks/reader and raise you some 51/4″disks/reader.
Cr@p! I was hoping they would modernize in stages. I have 50 High Density 5 1/4″ floppies still sealed in their original plastic I was hoping to sell them.
On a side note, when I retired from the USPS 3 years ago, locally they were still using PCs running Windows 95 for address/route memorization training of clerks that hand sorted mail the machines couldn’t read.
“the service has completed an upgrade to what is now known as the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS)”
Do you wanna create Skynet?
Cause this is how you create Skynet!
I used to have a hard drive. It had Form, Fit, and Function. It has now become a small floppy. Mis-in-Formed, Mis- Fit, and limited Function. The uptop CPU has some memory left but it is dim. No corruption to drive and it can be re-booted with the proper input, usually 50 to 100 mg. Just as well, my scoring is about like the Middies on the FIRST weekend in Dec; sporadic and gets me nowhere.
Mmm hmm, and how many nice forms did you convince that your 8 inch floppy would be a nice fit and expand even more as it became fully functional?
Enough to spread the data on the sheet. There was also plenty of RAM.
I remember my dad paying extra for his early Compaq having not one, but TWO full-height 5.25″ floppy drives! Also remember at one installation, whenever there was a system crash, seeing the tech rep toddling down the hall with his cake-carrier looking Winchester drive disk pack.
The database we used to track vehicles in the USAF used the 3.5″ floppies to store data on. When I retired in 2012, it was still in use.
“…what is now known as the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS)…”
Interesting blast from the past. I recall from my MCCC days that SACCS was a (relatively) high speed FAX system, located right above the SLFCS drawer in the comm rack. The only time I saw it used was in the trainer.