https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hckwxq8rnr0
They even have to work around some design mistakes made in the modules in order to read them correctly. Not many living people know more about the AGC than those guys (especially Mike Stewart).
Core memory was in use a lot longer than people think. Some fighters being produced as recently as the 1980s still used it.
> I have seen it [core memory] in service as recently as 2004 in a telephony control application