60 Minutes covered this in 2014: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tour-a-nuclear-launch-control-ce...
They were surprised to see things like "an antique computer without a monitor."
US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you could hide a wireless reader and transmitter in a floppy disk, you would still be able to pick it up on X-ray. It would be very difficult to differentiate an SD card with a malicious payload even if one X-rayed it.
Would X-rays corrupt the data on the floppy disk? Honest question, I have no idea.
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Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
They still sell them today. They're called Nuclear Event Detection (NED) chips. It detects a spike in voltage from the air and drops all power to everything, acting as an instantaneous power interrupt for everything you care about. I used to test them for Lockheed all the time on stuff that flies on stealth aircraft. There is a very specific sequence of events with very tight specs they have to pass, the whole thing…
How do you test such a thing? Small nukes?
All it's measuring is for a voltage spike. The ones we had had a real input pin and a test input pin. You hook up an O'scope to the output, supply a one-shot signal to the test pin, and check to make sure the output did what it was supposed to in the allotted time.
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is something to be said about using proven technologies. But there is also something to be said about using still supported technologies. Really, are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? Are we relying on "new-but-old" stock for occasional replacement needs for these systems? Sounds like that wrench that had to be FedEx'ed between silo bases for Minuteman maintenance: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-wr…
Yeah, we should really be using off-the-shelf components for our nuclear weaponry.
Please wait, updates are being applied... :D
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
They still sell them today. They're called Nuclear Event Detection (NED) chips. It detects a spike in voltage from the air and drops all power to everything, acting as an instantaneous power interrupt for everything you care about. I used to test them for Lockheed all the time on stuff that flies on stealth aircraft. There is a very specific sequence of events with very tight specs they have to pass, the whole thing…
How do you test such a thing? Small nukes?
Large radio antennas can create electromagnetic pulses like what you'd get from a nuke blast. I lived not too far from a site that tested them[1][2]. Just before it was decommissioned there were a lot of news articles written about how they did the testing. I can't find any photos now, but they're out there somewhere.
It's now a wildlife refuge..
[1]: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/woodbridge.h... [2]: http://eservice.pwcgov.org/library/digitallibrary/hsdw/A_Fol...
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is something to be said about using proven technologies. But there is also something to be said about using still supported technologies. Really, are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? Are we relying on "new-but-old" stock for occasional replacement needs for these systems? Sounds like that wrench that had to be FedEx'ed between silo bases for Minuteman maintenance: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-wr…
> are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? It would appear so, and in the US, yet: http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html#8
At one of my jobs, we used CPU (pre-Intel design), made by a defense manufacturer, in our control systems. When mfr. decided to discontinue CPU manufacturing, we bought all the inventory from last few production runs. AFAIK, we are still running those control systems using the same CPUs and hardware for now 30+ years.
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is something to be said about using proven technologies. But there is also something to be said about using still supported technologies. Really, are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? Are we relying on "new-but-old" stock for occasional replacement needs for these systems? Sounds like that wrench that had to be FedEx'ed between silo bases for Minuteman maintenance: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-wr…
Yeah, we should really be using off-the-shelf components for our nuclear weaponry.
Yeah, they can be quite reliable and available compared to machines no longer produced whose parts are pulled off eBay at times. ;) Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802
http://gaisler.com/index.php/products/components/gr712rc
Off-the-shelf for government even more so:
http://www.rockwellcollins.com/~/media/Files/Unsecure/Produc...
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/jared/ssp-hase-submission.pd...
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#68It reminds me this story, which was told to me as a true story, but I wouldn't bet too much on that. A soviet bomber gets lost and finds itself over western germany. It has to land on a military airport, which pilots jovially invite the soviet pilots for a drink. While they are drinking, intelligence officers take pictures of the plane, and are laughing at antiquated soviet technology, using bulbs while the US was we…
They still sell them today. They're called Nuclear Event Detection (NED) chips. It detects a spike in voltage from the air and drops all power to everything, acting as an instantaneous power interrupt for everything you care about. I used to test them for Lockheed all the time on stuff that flies on stealth aircraft. There is a very specific sequence of events with very tight specs they have to pass, the whole thing…
Would dropping power help? I thought the way the nuclear blast damages electronic circuits was by inducting large electric currants which would burn the components. If that's the case it doesn't really change anything whether the circuit was active or not at the time of the blast.
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#69I'd rather use outdated technology then use new technology that could introduce bugs.
What about the level of hardware failure with floppy disks? CF cards seem pretty suitable. They're simple and well established; there's likely to be a supply of them for a long time, and it seems feasible to have a batch custom made if that's necessary 30 years down the line.
I can verify that a floppy disk can resist a long time.
I have 3" 1/4 disks from early 90's that keep working fine, plus this last year, I saw a bunch of old 80's 8" floppy disks working on a old Z80 computer.
Re: US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is something to be said about using proven technologies. But there is also something to be said about using still supported technologies. Really, are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? Are we relying on "new-but-old" stock for occasional replacement needs for these systems? Sounds like that wrench that had to be FedEx'ed between silo bases for Minuteman maintenance: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-wr…
> are there producers of 8" floppy media anymore? It would appear so, and in the US, yet: http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html#8
Cool, a web page linked in a serious discussion that has copyright 1997 on it. The page was created about half way between the heydey of 8" floppies (late 70s) and today.