The now outdated floppy storage disk is being used by the US Department of Defense’s legacy system which coordinates the operational functions of forces such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft.
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News has surfaced that the USA nuclear weapons force in the Pentagon is still relying on 1970s technology, including floppy disks and an IBM Series-1 computer.
The 87-page report, which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) gave the scolding title of “Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems”, was drummed up for members of Congress who wanted to know how $80 billion worth of taxpayer dollars was being spent annually on information technology.
While the Department of Defense uses floppy disks, the Department of Treasury uses assembly language code — a type of computer coding that was used in the 1950s.
Investigators have criticised the United States government for spending three times more on maintaining aging, museum-ready computer systems than it does on modernisation. Floppy disks are still used “because it accomplished the required tasks we used the system for, meaning it would have been fiscally unnecessary to make the change”, said Capt. Christopher Mesnard, a spokesman for the Air Force Global Strike Command.
The US Department of Defense system runs on IBM Series/1 computers introduced in 1974 and discontinued in 1988. Several branches of the US government also had outdated technologies that will become even more expensive to maintain as time progresses.
Chances are if you handed a kid of this generation a floppy disk, they’ll probably have no idea what it is they are holding in their hands.
Other agencies are moving toward that more slowly, at best. This system was coded using the now defunct Classic ASP language.
“Legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete”, stated the report. The GOA therefore concluded that, “Until agencies fully review at-risk O&M investments, the government’s oversight of such investments will be impaired and its spending could be wasteful”.
Unfortunately for the DoD, there were funds only to upgrade that COBOL system, because the agency still uses the antiquated programming language to run another system that tracks claims filed by veterans for benefits, eligibility, and dates of death.
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Replacement coming?: No -the agency has general plans to update this system, but there is no time frame established for this update. But the report criticized the federal government – specifically the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) – for not setting specific targets for that spending.
