[ale] Fwd: [mil-oss] US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations

[Jim Kinney]

Yikes!!!

> better than thumb drives :
>
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/25/us-military-uses-8-inch-floppy-disks-to-coordinate-nuclear-force-operations.html
> US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force
operations
> Dan Mangan | @_DanMangan
> 55 Mins AgoCNBC.com
> 292
> SHARES
> 106
> COMMENTSJoin the Discussion
>
> Maybe they use the '80s flick "War Games" as a training film, too.
>
> The U.S. Defense Department is still using — after several decades —
8-inch floppy disks in a computer system that coordinates the operational
functions of the nation's nuclear forces, a jaw-dropping new report reveals.
>
> Lezh | Getty Images; Getty Images
>
> The Defense Department's 1970s-era IBM Series/1 Computer and
long-outdated floppy disks handle functions related to intercontinental
ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft, according
to the new Government Accountability Office report.
>
> The department's outdated "Strategic Automated Command and Control
System" is one of 10 of the oldest information technology investments or
systems detailed in the sobering GAO report, which calls for a number of
federal agencies "to address aging legacy systems."
>
> The report shows that creaky IT systems are being used to handle
important functions related to the nation's taxpayers, federal prisoners
and military veterans, as well as to the America's nuclear umbrella.
>>
>> "Our ultimate goal is to retire all of them as quickly as
possible."-Terence Milholland, tech officer, Internal Revenue Service, on
the agency's older IT systems
>
> "Federal legacy IT systems are becoming increasingly obsolete: Many use
outdated software languages and hardware parts that are unsupported," the
report found. "Agencies reported using several systems that have components
that are, in some cases, at least 50 years old."
>
> While Defense has plans to update its nuclear-related technology system
by the end of fiscal 2017, other agencies are tacking more slowly, at best.
>
> More than 75 percent of $80 billion budgeted for federal IT efforts in
fiscal year 2015 was spent on operations and maintenance investment, and
such spending has increased in the past seven years, GAO noted.
>
> In contrast, spending on "development, modernization and enhancement" of
federal IT systems has declined, according to GAO.
>
> ‹
>
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>
> GAO noted that the government plans to require agencies to identify which
IT systems need to be updated, and then modify them. But until then, the
GAO warned, "the government runs the risk of maintaining systems that have
outlived their effectiveness."
>
> In testimony to Congress on Wednesday, the chief technology officer for
the Internal Revenue Service said that although the agency continues to
operate a number of older IT systems, "it is not our preference to do so."
>
> "Our ultimate goal is to retire all of them as quickly as possible," said
Terence Milholland, the IRS tech officer.
>
> GAO pointed out that aging systems include the Treasury Department's
"individual master file," which is the authoritative data source for
individual taxpayers. It's used to assess taxes and generates refunds. That
file "is written in assembly language code — a low-level computer code that
is difficult to write and maintain — and operates on an IBM mainframe," the
report said.
>
> 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.
>
> While Treasury has general plans to replace the systems, "there is no
firm data associated with the transition," GAO's report said.
>
> In addition to Defense, the departments of Treasury, Commerce, Health and
Human Services and the Veterans' Administration "reported using 1980s and
1990s Microsoft operating systems that stopped being supported by the
vendor more than a decade ago," GAO said.
>
> And the Social Security Administration "reported re-hiring retired
employees to maintain its" systems which use COBOL, the computer
programming language which was widely used — in the 1970s — according to
GAO.
>
> COBOL is also used by the Justice Department in its program to provide
information about prison inmates, and the VA, which uses it for employee
timekeeping and to track veterans' benefits claims and dates of death, the
report said.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> John Scott
>  240.401.6574
> < jms3rd at gmail.com >
> http://powdermonkey.blogs.com
> @johnmscott
>
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