Recently, the documents of the Accounts Chamber of the United States of America were published, from which it became clear about a rather interesting fact. A significant amount of nuclear arsenal is controlled by old electronic computers, which were created in the 1970s of the last century. It's hard enough to believe, but some of the US nuclear weapons are controlled by an IBM Series-1 computer, which operates on 8-inch floppy disks. Such a serious weapon depends on already physically and morally obsolete computers.
If you are surprised by this fact, then you will be even more amazed that $ 61 billion from the pockets of American taxpayers is allocated for technical support of these computers and software. This amount is simply amazing, exceeding the budget for the support of modern computing systems. For some reason, the US military does not notice this fact? Why are they unable to upgrade the whole system? "Everything works fine and it’s better not to go there," says Valerie Henderson, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
You can conduct a comparative analysis of the technology of the time and the present. The old floppy disk holds 237 kilobytes of information, and 150,000 such floppy disks can be placed on a modern flash drive. If we put the floppy disks in one stack, we could observe a huge tower 300 meters high.
However, there is other information that in recent years, the US military has begun to modernize with very small steps. Diskettes will soon be abandoned, and by 2020 a full replacement of such equipment is planned.
A little about the history of nuclear weapons
Back in 1898, Polish scientists made one of the most significant discoveries. A substance has been found that releases a huge amount of radioactive energy. Already in 1932, the atomic nucleus was first split. By the summer of '45, three nuclear bombs were built, two of which were dropped on Hiroshima. After the war, the United States of America was the main nuclear country.
