There is more to this than "out dated" technology. There is tremendous espionage and malicious activity protection by using outdated technology. The schematics of these systems were never online, making and introducing malware is also prohibitively difficult due to the lack of domain knowledge and expertise on the technology. There are huge upsides to using outdated technology when it comes to nuclear warheards.
what's the difference between outdated technology which has never been documented online, and new technology which has never been documented online?
If you're using Windows 10 or MacOS, people know how to find their way around in the absence of documentation. How many people could figure out the command line interface to a 1970s era IBM Series/1 without docs?
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
I seem to remember someone telling me how there are a couple of cottage industries that center around the fact that the US Government has to buy goods that are US-made.
I think ceiling fans are one example. (i.e. There's relatively few US-based ceiling fan manufacturers. For one of them, I think the large chunk of their business is the US Government.)
It 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 well into the age of transistors. It's only back in the US that the intelligence officers realised that the soviet were using bulbs not for the lack of transistors, but because they can resist a nuclear explosion...
Everyone needs to shut the hell up about nuclear obsolescence. If we can just keep the politicians from noticing the need to "modernize" these terrible weapons, then in a few short decades we will have achieved a de facto global disarmament. Everyone can continue manning their silos filled with stale dud warheads, fingers hovering over buttons that no longer work. We'll have all the stratigic stabilizing influences o…
It's too late. The Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar budget to modernize the nuclear arsenal. The inclusion of low-yield nuclear devices is considered especially unnerving as it is believed their use would be easier to justify and could lean to a full nuclear exchange. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernize...
To be fair, Obama requesting the money is one of the best ways to ensure Congress does not appropriate it.
Treasury's master business file, which contains all tax data on individual business income taxpayers, likewise is written in that same assembly language code, which was first used in the 1950s, and maintained on the old-school IBM mainframe.
https://callenq.com is the free market bringing 2016 technology to the IRS to receive prompt customer service.
It's too late. The Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar budget to modernize the nuclear arsenal. The inclusion of low-yield nuclear devices is considered especially unnerving as it is believed their use would be easier to justify and could lean to a full nuclear exchange. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernize...
To be fair, Obama requesting the money is one of the best ways to ensure Congress does not appropriate it.
While true in general, with regard to military applications, Obama requesting money can be a way to get Congress to appropriate more.
I'd rather use outdated technology then use new technology that could introduce bugs.
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.
what's the difference between outdated technology which has never been documented online, and new technology which has never been documented online?
If you're using Windows 10 or MacOS, people know how to find their way around in the absence of documentation. How many people could figure out the command line interface to a 1970s era IBM Series/1 without docs?
If you want documentation on old computers, check out bitsavers; piles of information on the IBM Series/1 is at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/series1
At one time, government engineers were in equal standing with contractor engineers. As defense spending dwindled down after the Vietnam war, defense contractors began to lobby for more control of defense workloads. On a contract, the government engineers would maintain the product and defense contractors did the development. Money set aside for documentation was devoured by the contractors so that only the contractors had the knowledge base of the product. Future weapon system development is the money maker for contractors, so to have them bid on upgrading a weapon system such as this, the cost would be very inflated. So you have this situation where the government cannot organically do the job either because of loss of expertise or documentation of the system. Or it is cost prohibitive using a defense contractor. The expertise for government oversight for contracting is a major problem. As an example, the DMV database system for the state of California. When you look at all the companies today using the cloud and creating huge databases practically overnight, how can projects like this fail. Another example, the Obama Care website. The government at every level, just does not have the expertise to insure that contractors perform to the letter of the contract. And then you have all this lobbying crap by the contractors to contend with. It really comes down to ETHICS. Contractors are not out to give you the most bang for your buck, they want the most bucks for smallest bang. After spending 28 years working with defense contractor engineers, I was not impressed. Unfortunately, I was not impressed with the ethics or the adherence to security concerns of my coworkers either, so I walked away. I would not be so concern with the 8 inch floppies, but more concern with the electronics that use them.