[6d6b73]

I think this whole reliability talk was about the devices that use the floppy drives not the disk themselves. To get rid of floppy drives some machines would need to be replaced or retrofitted with newer models, and this is the source of unreliability.

[mikeash]

I don't think so:

> “The floppy disks and associated technology are tried and true,” I was told. “As you can imagine, we want to ensure the utmost in reliability and efficacy when operating such a critical weapon system. Therefore, if a system is ‘old,’ but still reliable, we are inclined to use it.”

That's a quote, not a direct claim by the article, but the article presents it as factual and doesn't follow it up with anything but confirmation.

[6d6b73]

"if a __system__ is 'old'" is the key phrase here.

[mikeash]

Yes, but at the beginning the speaker explicitly calls out floppy disks as "tried and true" when they definitely are not. Tried, yes, but not true.

I can buy the argument that the systems as a whole are trustworthy even if the floppy disks they use kind of suck. But this quote goes beyond that.