Why America's Nuclear Missiles Are Still Controlled by Floppy Disks

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Did you know that America's nuclear missiles, capable of reaching any target on Earth, are controlled by 8-in floppy disks? Here's why that was actually intentional. The US Air Force's Minuteman 3 ballistic missile system, buried in hardened silos across United States, ran on a computer system installed in the 1970s that used 8-in floppy disks as its primary data storage medium until a 2019 upgrade. But the Air Force's reasoning was deliberate. Old technology that predates the modern internet cannot be hacked. An 8-in floppy disk system with no network connection and no wireless capability is immune to every cyber attack developed in the last 40 years.

[00:00:44]Isolation was the security strategy.

[00:00:47]The 2019 upgrade replaced the floppy disks with a modern secure digital storage system. But the Minuteman 3's core architecture remains largely from the original 1970s design. The Air Force extended the missile's service life to 2030. Defenders argue that a nuclear deterrent that cannot be remotely accessed or digitally compromised is exactly what a deterrent should be.