Yeah, the article reads as if the real problem is a lack of a tested system of backups. Or I don't know how else to parse this line:
- "It's a question of risk. The system is currently working just fine but we know that with each increasing year risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure."
"Data degradation on the floppies" should not, by itself, cause any sort of "catastrophic failure" in a sound system. If one software disk fails, you should have five identical copies in a drawer, five more in a different room, ten more off-site, plus a disk image on cloud storage that you can write fresh floppy disks from.
I mean, it's probably a good idea to change the storage medium too—but that's not the root problem.
The technology works, there is a replacement outlined, there is no shortage of floppy disks - even 5 1/4 ones.