re: US Air Force finally retires 8-inch floppies from missile launch control system

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Yeah, that's it.

That's the reason.

Took 30 years, but now they are hard to hack.

Damn, you're a fricking moron.

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You should apologize because that is exactly why they kept them. He was 100% right.

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The computers were purchased in the 1970s.

At what point did they decide to keep them because they were hard to hack?

1980?

1985?

1990?

1995?

2000?

2005?

No, they did not keep them because they are hard to hack. They kept them because, for decades, it was cheaper to keep them rather than replace them. The system remains in use because, in short, it still works. The floppy drives were scheduled to be replaced with Secure Digital devices by the end of 2017. Modernization across the entire Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) enterprise remains ongoing.

Although one benefit of maintaining an archaic, legacy system is that it is far more difficult to hack, that is not THE reason they are archaic.

Institutional inertia is the reason they are archaic.