Floppy disk drive wanted: Why the Navy defends the country with floppy disks
Germany is no longer defended in the Hindu Kush, but on drive A: Why the German Navy urgently needs a disk replacement.
(Image: Bundeswehr/Sascha Jonack; Montage: heise online)
Former German Defense Minister Peter Struck once said: Germany is being defended in the Hindu Kush. The Afghanistan mission is now history. A new tender suggests that the country now has to be defended on drive A:. Because without floppy disks, the F123 class frigates are not going anywhere. There is now a tender for this in order to be able to continue operating the Brandenburg class.
Floppy disks - the older ones among us will remember - are those magnetic data storage devices that many people associate with fond childhood memories of their first attempts at using a PC, Amiga, C64 and the like. The floppy disk was widely used in 3.5 and 5 1/4 inch formats - and was also available in 8 inch format. According to information from the blog "Augen geradeaus", this is exactly what is required in the case of the frigate.
Diskette use in vehicles not unusual
The operating parameters of the warships are to be recorded on the large floppy disks - the so-called data acquisition system stores data for the propulsion and power supply, for example. The use of floppy disk drives in vehicles is not that unusual. Even in the railroad sector, there are still many systems worldwide that are either based on old operating systems or even use old hardware for storage media. For example, the light rail vehicles in San Francisco only run on 5.25-inch floppy disks. And Deutsche Bahn was recently looking for an administrator for Windows 3.11. As the vehicles are generally in use for a very long time, they use devices that are outdated from today's perspective. The fact that some of the newer hardware already available at the time of construction is not used has to do with the fact that established systems are considered more reliable.
The four Brandenburg-class frigates (Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) were built between 1992 and 1996 and have their home port in Wilhelmshaven. They specialize in hunting submarines and air defence. They have a crew of 236 soldiers, are 139 meters long and 16.7 meters wide. The maximum draught is 6.30 meters.
Office hopes for emulator
However, the Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support, which issued the invitation to tender, seems to have little hope of being able to replace the floppy drives with new devices. Instead, the Koblenz-based office is looking for someone who can develop an "emulating storage system to replace the floppy disk unit" and integrate it on board. The whole thing is to take place between October 2024 and July 2025. Similar conversions in the US military could serve as a model. A few years ago, the nuclear weapon control systems there were also converted from 8-inch floppy disks to SSDs.
Further details remain hidden from the public for "reasons of confidentiality". And who knows whether this would not also exceed the storage space of an 8-inch floppy disk, which is between 180 KB and 1 MB.
(mki)
