>The Government Accountability Office said the Pentagon was one of several departments where "legacy systems" urgently needed to be replaced.
>The report said taxpayers spent $61bn (£41bn) a year on maintaining ageing technologies
>The report said that the Department of Defence systems that co-ordinated intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft "runs on an IBM Series-1 Computer - a 1970s computing system - and uses eight-inch floppy disks".
>"However, to address obsolescence concerns, the floppy drives are scheduled to be replaced with secure digital devices by the end of 2017."
That such coordination has always been garbage and thankfully we've never needed to make use of it. After the upgrade it will continue to be garbage and hopefully still not needed.
Ian Sanchez
we really need to get windows 10 on those systems. just let the cloud take care of it
Daniel Barnes
How powerful do nuclear weapon computers need to be exactly? Most of the tech is in the missiles themselves, I think. The computers basically handle the launch authorization, no?
Isaiah Sanchez
At least they're so old nobody can accidentally catch Locky on them.
Jayden Bell
What's wrong with floppies? Aren't they more reliable than optical media?
Zachary Diaz
At least they're immune to viruses.
Justin Campbell
slow as sin, but that isnt an issue since they aren't handling particularly heavy bandwidth
Ryder Gray
Everyone knows that it's 000000. And now I'm on all of the watchlists ever.
Connor Cooper
That they're said to "co-ordinate" gives me the impression that these systems are more about asset management than actual weapon operations, as you surmised.
Camden Garcia
>What are the repercussions of this, Sup Forums? The floppy gets copied.
>yfw this music video had a bigger budget than most modern game DRM
Jonathan Gomez
Probably more effective, too.
Liam Scott
What's stopping them from upgrading to newer tech I mean shouldn't flash based memory cards be better?
Gavin Wilson
Read the article.
Bentley Davis
the system is pretty much unhackable. Almost nobody except for enthusiasts and the people that have to work with the system would know how to operate it.
Josiah Sanchez
So? If it ain't broke don't fix it
Leo Bennett
I read it already, it says they use it just because it still works, but wouldn't you expect something as important as nuclear arms to be upgraded to the latest possible tech often?
Isaac Morris
When it comes to hacking ICBM software of the US DoD, I imagine the people tasked with "hacking" would begin by familiarizing themselves with its operation. I don't mean Ivan and his fucking bird in Siberia, but those employed by their governments to do this professionally.
Ryder Taylor
What about Matthew Broderick?
Grayson Hernandez
WOPR was a brand new system and closer to what was common at the time. C64's DOS machines are a lot less common today.
Wyatt Powell
Not really.
Jordan Green
Read it again.
>but wouldn't you expect something as important as nuclear arms to be upgraded to the latest possible tech often? haha. no.
Jeremiah James
like said, the fact that they use such old tech that predates the internet makes it basically impossible to hack, it should be viewed as a good thing desu
John Lee
>ends up breaking at some point >it's now too old to find parts
Julian Diaz
>Global thermonuclear war reading those words always gives me the chills - knowing the always and never approach to the weapon systems.
Hunter Jones
I don't think they're connected to the internet, user. Hell, I doubt even if they were upgraded, random usb flash drives wouldn't be allowed near it in case of a stuxnet.
Aiden Sullivan
What's wrong with this? Why would they need to upgrade it? Don't they know that newer tech is so much more fragile?
>if it ain't broke, don't fix it
Zachary Gutierrez
but what if it breaks and then you cant fix it?
Brayden King
MY AMIGA NEVER BREAKS
Ryan Cruz
This ALL nuclear arms are have their own closed networks limited to only the control room of their facilities.
Did you guys think nuclear missiles had a nice node.js web UI in Obama's office or something
Charles Cruz
>implying they use those small shitty 5 1/4" disks.
Gavin Bailey
>Aren't they more reliable than optical media? Floppy disks are probably the most unreliable removable media format in existence.
Jose Morgan
Read the article.
Aiden Lee
Why won't you be able to fix it?
What sort of break are we talking about?
>whoops, a nuke went off in the computer room
Joseph Peterson
depends. optical doesn't like being around mold. floppies don't like being around magnets. The 3 1/2 floppies were really shitty toward the end there, but that was a manufacturing issue.
Ethan Adams
>What are the repercussions of this, Sup Forums? Nothing? Data storage is data storage, many nuclear plants are still running on PDP-11s too.
As long as they keep their shit backed up and the drives in good working order, I'd trust that shit just fine.
Asher Flores
Read the article yourself or even read the copied green text from the OP. They used reliable 8" disks.
Colton Edwards
That's compact cassettes. Maybe punched tape but I never had to work with that.
Oliver Stewart
This. Capacitors and floppy disks have a limited lifespan, God help us all if this system fails and the russkies attack.
Joking aside, nuclear weapons should require insane amounts of up to date security. This is one system where security through obscurity won't work.
Jacob Rivera
...Yes. 8", not 5 1/4".
Lincoln Torres
I guess its to keep the cylons out of the system.
Matthew Gutierrez
Then replace the capacitors and have new disks produced, the supply chain of the U.S. nuclear arsenal isn't a clearance aisle at the local Staples.
That old shit's probably actually easier to keep running than new hardware anyway which is full of BGA and all kinds of proprietary surface mounted shit you can't easily source a replacement for. Given the market placement of the Series/1, it's probably all 7400 series logic and other discrete components, maybe one of those trademark IBM silver chips every so often, though I'm not really familiar with that series.
Connor Barnes
>implying thats a bad thing >wanting iNuke >wanting facebook share button on your nukes I bet the moment they upgrade all their shit gets hacked .all comps in the silo display tranny porn and someone installs doom on the nukes.
Brandon Jenkins
Wonder if they used GCR or MFM encoding...
Kayden Bailey
It's 2016, come on people!
Nathan Ross
>share button on your nukes legitimately keked
Cameron Williams
>tfw you lose first strike capabilities against the sovs because windows forced your launch computer to update to Windows 14
Kayden Gomez
>This is one system where security through obscurity won't work. Not obscurity, the fact that this shit cannot be activated over a network makes this unhackable.
Cooper James
>Just tap on the map to launch the nuke Tfw the unintuitive interface saved us from nuclear holocaust
Tyler Davis
>News: ISIS immobilized the US's nuclear forces >what first thought to be a state of the art EMP bomb turned out to be a huge ass magnet.
Grayson Hill
Everything's connected through the sneakernet. That's how the Iranians had one of their test reactors blown up.
Nathaniel Brooks
>someone installs doom on the nuke
Anthony Reyes
On second thought, how could I be so naive?
I wonder what made them choose these systems over DEC hardware which as far as I know was 7400-based through and through, unless this was set up in the later PDP-8/11 era.
Leo Bell
>if it's old it's bad why do normies think this? they have a good reason to keep using giant floppies
Liam Collins
That was USB and MS Windows auto-run install virus feature.
Charles Carter
>newer can be better Why can't Sup Forums pseudoluddites accept that ?
Jose Carter
If I ever work for rockstar, and a user tries to get around securom, that music will play on a loop forever.
Gabriel Taylor
newer can be better, but in this case you have to be damn sure it's even more reliable and secure than the old tech which is hard to do when you're dealing with missiles made in the 70's
Kayden Cook
Yes. The type of media and OS were irrelevant to the point I was making.
Juan Hernandez
Why do you always assume that because someone doesn't shit themselves every time they see something old means they automatically think it's the end all be all and best way to do everything?
New ways can bring improvements, but just because you can improve upon something doesn't mean that something is irredeemable shit, for this particular use case I can't really see a justification to upgrade the system to something new and not as "trustworthy" as long as it performs to expectations and can be easily repaired.
Michael Thomas
I would like to think that the "Government Accountability Office" has done some research and wouldn't spend a few millions just to endanger everyone. >mfw I realised as I typed this that this is happening because some guy is probably brokering a deal with MS/IBM or some shit
Nathaniel Lewis
>baby's first thread/click bait
>computer does what is has to do,and has dont it for years.
why are the outdated man!!! arm cores are cheap
>most advance computer at the time of installation for security have now 360'ed in to security by obscurity
why is this bad
Jace Thomas
analogue systems are more reliant and easier to maintain than digital systems
Jackson Johnson
They're holding onto them in case John Titor needs one of them.
Kevin Cruz
>analogue britcucks
William Wood
Computer technology has always been digital. However, older computer tech is more reliable in certain aspects. For example, older computers are less prone to overheating issues.
Luke Nguyen
>normies >baby's first thread/click bait
Did you fuckers even read the article ? >report came from the Government Accountability Office >Pentagon official states that they're indeed bound to be replaced/update
Here's a picture with words.
Dylan Perry
Here in Germany several branches of the government bought extended support for win XP instead of switching in time. Most politicians are retarded as fuck
Charles Davis
>Computer technology has always been digital.
m8...
Wyatt Martinez
Good goyim! Upgrade your nukes to the River Trail JavaScript engine with our new Intel Active Management Technology technology!
Andrew Cox
It's a fundbait article. They pretend that (inter)national security is at stake if they don't get more money.
Wyatt Roberts
>US DoD has to pretend they need money lol
Connor Richardson
If they ever had, I'd be glad to make the design for it... Nice blinking bomb icons that are more annoying than Warez-site-ads: "click me!"
Jaxon Martinez
Yeah better upgrade that shit so Obama can launch a nuke with an iPhone app.
Nathaniel Cox
nigger the whole nukes activation is run on shitty old computers article is old,for like 3 years or more this is clickbait/fundbait
Jonathan Morales
You'd think those would be on 24/7, how long do CPUs even last of 24/7 being on?
Jordan Roberts
>the notion that something is old had been around ever since that thing was considered old alrighty
Dylan Sullivan
They control nuclear weapons really the last thing you want to fuck up. What do you want them to do, employ some node hipsters so they can store their configuration on Dropbox?
Gavin Gutierrez
Everyone's not even talking about the important bits
How fast can that computer go? Can it even compute a sha1 hash? I doubt it can even do blowfish hashing with a reasonable level of iteration
That means that the nuclear launch codes in that system, are either unprotected or weakly protected. And security through obscurity never works in the long run. Meaning those codes will be created
Brody Johnson
Irrelevant when the facility is protected by modern security, as well as guys with really big guns.
Joseph Morales
We've all seen The Rock, user. We shouldn't be taking any chances.
Dominic Hall
they have modern 1970s computers
Austin Robinson
This is supposed to be the final wall to stop nuclear warfare. When designing systems. You always have to think of "What If?"s. What If the base gets overthrown by the Chinese army?
Adam Hernandez
Yes, and I'm very certain they've thought of those situations.
Brandon Wood
>all comps in the silo display tranny porn and someone installs doom on the nukes
Carter Green
>How fast can that computer go? Can it even compute a sha1 hash? I doubt it can even do blowfish hashing with a reasonable level of iteration It's not like they're using a Trash-80 or some other bottom of the barrel shitbox, nor that they would need to encrypt a ton of data to get the job done should the need for some reason arise. Modern encryption methods were invented around this period by researchers that were probably using very similar hardware, at least in market placement.
>And security through obscurity never works in the long run. Meaning those codes will be created And how exactly would they go about this on an obscure, airgapped proprietary IBM platform running undocumented software that has never actually been used and demonstrated?
Even if you somehow could generate valid launch codes, what good what it do for you, exactly? You would have to have someone (or probably a team of conspirators) on-site and even then the most they could probably do is launch maybe one or two ICBMs if that.
Caleb Cox
This is the government we're talking about.
SHA1 was published in 93. MD5 in 92. MD2 in 89
This machine is from 1970s.
> You would have someone ( or probably a team...
And I'm sure a massive organization would have the resources to occupy a base for as long as they want. Russia, China, for example
Caleb Campbell
Governments are pretty good at what they do, despite memes. Private industry isn't the bastion of efficiency and competence, either.
Easton Harris
Really. Governments are good at securing a nuclear silo for 50 years when they can't even secure Clinton's emails?
You know. Those 50 years where technology grew at supposedly double the rate every two years? Meaning modern computers would have grown by 2^25 times by then?
MD5 took 15 years to get broken. What kind of security would we have after 50 years?
Christopher Morgan
If the base got overthrown, then that means it's game over, since many of the missile silos are hidden deep in the maiand
David Hernandez
The government wasn't securing Clinton's emails, ya dingus.
Ryan Nelson
why did you post a pic of kalousek?
Landon Roberts
>Sup Forums gets tasked with upgrading the nukes >after a few weeks the job is done, everyone is happy >suddenly ancient aliens awake and the nukes are needed as the only way to stop them from destroying human civilization! >1 >2 >Fizz
Andrew Gray
It's a reaction image used to show my feelings towards silly statements.
Ian Wilson
>And I'm sure a massive organization would have the resources to occupy a base for as long as they want. Russia, China, for example Let's not even get started on how absolutely stupid and improbable a ground invasion of the US would be.
Let's instead look at it from this angle;
You send a contingent to take over one or maybe even up to a dozen silos...
You somehow don't get shot out of the air,
or you somehow manage to make it on foot through kilometers upon kilometers of some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth after a coastal invasion of the most highly populated (and defended) areas in a country where there are more guns than people,
against all odds, you have somehow managed to successfully make it through the one of the most powerful military forces on Earth, some of the most defendable land on Earth, and you capture some silos...
And instantly, you are destroyed by a counter-attack either by conventional military force, or the thousands of other silos the US still controls.
Along with your entire country.
And potentially the world.
All over enough ordinance to maybe destroy a medium-sized city in a flyover state.
What a great plan! You should become a general.
Liam Campbell
these images are cringe
James Richardson
That's the point dingus
No. Some very good ways to block everything. They'd have to rip off all the existing machinery down and stock their own. Which could take months
Who says that China can't just take state by state until they reach the silo?
I still rather not risk the "What If" test. You'd make a horrible sysadmin.
Josiah Smith
So how was it the government's fault when they didn't own those servers? It's the Clintons' fault.
Nicholas Phillips
So if they get rid of the systems, Do you think I could buy them? Always wanted a IBM Series-1.
I wonder if my Middle School still has a copy of Don't Copy That Floppy on Laser-Disc...