That's less due to "don't want to upgrade" and more due to "if we upgrade, we take critical infrastructure offline for X days and this is not ok." It's the same reason they still used IBM mainframes in some large businesses well into the 2010s. Service interruptions were considered more detrimental than the inefficiency of old technology.
You're correct, But I wanted to bring up a (albeit not entirely accurate) comparison.
A lot of warplanes run on dated OS 's but that's more of a matter of not wanting to deal with potential security risks upgrading with no benefit or upgrades to capabilities. It's like machinery on assembly lines using OS's that are out of date but only need to run a simple program all day so no one ever updates them.
If I'm not mistaken, most aircraft are still on floppies, military and commercial.
Military? Yes. Although it depends on the plane and the military for the same reason as commercial planes.
Lockheed got fucked on the F-22. Rumsfeld, Cheney, McCain and Gates made sure the project got kneecapped even though the USAF was begging to let them have at least 300-something of them. With only around 170 of them around it's more expensive to do upgrades. They're still getting one because they'll only get retired with the NGAD is ready.
In one episode of the fighter pilot podcast the guest said that F-15s still used magnetic tape data cartridges. But this might have been for the F-15Cs and not the Es.
It was both as Lockheed had been very public about having a limited number of the chipsets long before the F-22 even entered production. Plus Lockheed was more interested in selling the F-35s and the F-22s was tying up their production lines.
I had no idea the chipsets were that much of a limiting factor before the orders were even cut. Retiring without a single air to air kill, good night sweet prince.
The funniest thing is how the stereotypical boomercon just uncritically accepts outdated doctrine because the Israelis did it. No, it's not the fact that they essentially had European refugees handling a mix of firearms with different manuals of arms and it was difficult to make them all safe and trained with them. It's because it's "tactical".
I really wish some /k/tard saved their old videos. Theres a real fun one where they make an applicant tiptoe accross steel beams collecting clay shooting plates and he falls spilling his whole collection everywhere
I require more info on this podcast.
That’s not exactly true. The DoD’s agency DISA plays a huge role in making sure systems are accredited and up to date on approved patches. For dated and discontinued software they will patch it to its final patch if the patch is proven secure. Generally DISA won’t drag its heels about patching unless there is an opinion that the patch would be detrimental.
A lot of people think of the really cheap and awful 3.5" floppies you'd see a bunch around the turn of the millennium, where the standards of manufacture were made as low as possible so the obsolete format could be pushed at a real cheap price. Those are horribly unreliable, but a lot of people forget or aren't aware of that high quality diskettes were also made, and if you look back at stuff like the 8.5" diskettes (which are soft and literally floppy), those were available at a very high level of quality if you were willing to pay for that, and they are actually surprisingly hardy even in substandard storage conditions.
This is also another thing where quality and type is a critical aspect, looking at cheap as fuck 8-track tapes, those wear easily, but there's other forms of tape media which is not just surprisingly hardy, but there's modern forms of tape media which can hold hundreds of gigabytes easily. I don't know what format they use for F-15s, but it's probably more than adequate if it has worked this far.
Right? Israeli carry was a smart idea for the circumstances at the time. It's a ragtag army with little money and they gotta buy all kinds of different surplus to arm themselves, so sidearms are a wild mix. Safeties off, chambers empty, magazines full: this works consistently and safely with any service pistols I can think of, which is great for making sure various people who may not have the best training don't go and have an accident with an unfamiliar pistol.
I love idiots thinking copying Israel is a great idea.
They do a lot of quirky and probably stupid things with their military and police tactics because they've never needed to change. Like outfitting Mossad with .22 rimfire handguns for decades (they did change this), or refusing to create standardized MREs for troops (each squad gets what amounts to a cardboard box of high calorie snacks and supermarket canned tuna in their APC, and full meals come from the mess truck).
The MRE thing makes perfect sense considering their entire country is the size of New Jersey, so their supply lines are ridiculously short. We're used to the idea of having an expeditionary army out on long deployments so we need that sort of infrastructure. Meanwhile, if shit goes down in Israel I wouldn't be surprised if your average soldier got stationed so close to home his grandmother would be calling him home for dinner instead.
My point is more that it's not forward-thinking, because they don't care much about facing a future war at all. They're prepared for constant border skirmishes with civvies trapped inside a giant refugee camp and the shaved apes in fatigues that Egypt employs as a military.