FAA to Eliminate Floppy Disks Used in Air Traffic Control Systems – Windows 95 Also Being Phased Out
June 9th, 2025Maybe the FAA can borrow some left over 8-inchers from the U.S. Air Force:
Defense tech news site C4isrnet reports that the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS)—the communication infrastructure that transmits emergency action messages for nuclear command centers—is ditching the floppy disks. Lieutenant Colonel Jason Rossi, 595th Strategic Communications Squadron commander, told C4isrnet the SACCS is upgrading to a “highly-secure solid state digital storage solution.”
Via: Tom’s Hardware:
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration just outlined an ambitious goal to upgrade the U.S.’s air traffic control (ATC) system and bring it into the 21st century. According to NPR, most ATC towers and other facilities today feel like they’re stuck in the 20th century, with controllers using paper strips and floppy disks to transfer data, while their computers run Windows 95. While this likely saved them from the disastrous CrowdStrike outage that had a massive global impact, their age is a major risk to the nation’s critical infrastructure, with the FAA itself saying that the current state of its hardware is unsustainable.
“The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips,” acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said earlier this week,” This is the most important infrastructure project that we’ve had in this country for decades. Everyone agrees — this is non-partisan. Everyone knows we have to do it.”
I recall that the only agency to have anything that could be called a “Y2K problem” back in early 2000 was the FAA, because they were still using computers that were installed a few years before I was born in 1967.
Can openers don’t need electricity.