Pretty sure they went with the higher capacity Iomega Zip Drives.

Someone has to stand a foot away to catch the disk as its hurled out when ejected.

So funny enough, I checked and those are actually still for sale brand new. I feel old.

The sources I could find say that they didn't replace the computers accessing the data. They are still IBM Series/1 [1] machines. So whatever is being used, there has to be some kind of floppy (or tape, etc) emulator in front of it.

It's likely the floppy drive in question was an IBM 23FD "Minnow"[2]. The capacity and timeframe matches up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Series/1

[2] https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=885

The US military after using 37 different shell companies to purchase hundreds of gotek floppy emulators and 5.25" to 3.5" drive brackets:

> Damn I'm good at modernization

Well, they will also need 8" to 5.25".

those were 16-bit machines so perhaps they have to find aging flash drives smaller than 2GB?

EPROMs, and the UV lamp is locked in a cupboard with a highly secure combination lock

> secure solid-state

Or a CD