Comment by mgdlbp
4 years ago
This is the sixth (possibly seventh) time according to the game's subreddit
https://old.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/v2r744/it_might...
> 1. Something about the eurocopter tiger was leaked
> 2. The Challenger 2 had a leak about the gun or turret rotation
> 3. The more recent Challenger 2 leak about the armor
> 4. A leak about the penetration of the Type 99
> 5. The leak about the Leclerc turret rotation speed
> 6. Now this current leak about a Chinese shell
(with more details scattered in the other comments)
Whilst these are 'classified leaks' they are not exactly strategic leaks. Right now we're seeing a lot of real truth's play out in Ukraine about just how great armored vehicles and tanks are.
Most of the above seem more in the realm of commercial in confidence leaks, and or embarrassing information for a military than anything that's significant.
> Whilst these are 'classified leaks' they are not exactly strategic leaks.
Just to expand on the multiple levels of classification a bit. In the UK we have multiple levels, as per the Govt's own open source description [0]: official, secret and top secret. Official is sometimes give the caveat 'sensitive' which corresponds to the old 'restricted'. The level 'confidential' isn't used officially now.
At the risk of massive over-simplification, the lowest levels of classification might be used to describe 'how' something works (so that it can be easily read by users in training), while higher levels might describe how well it works, vulnerabilities, etc.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-securi...
I think it is more that the public is becoming a third observer in military matters (as in all government and commercial matters).
The point is not that "omg the US Army knows our internal penetration specs (#)" but more "omg the public knows." But this could be an advantage for militaries - leak enough of this, guide enough games designers in the right way and build a groundswell of support for ... well modelled, arms improvements and upgrades.
You should probably also model the value of having the parts of a weapon manufactured in 49 states in 49 factories rather than say one. And see how you can get public support to chnage that
in general I am saying that this game provides a well informed public. seems like a good thing. except if you like corruption
(#) The CIA already told them. right now there is probably a spy in washington trying to work out how to say "yes, we spent 15 million dollars obtaining the specs on the Chinese shell last month, but how were we supposed to know ..."
I think it won't be too hard.
"We invested 15 million into our network of spies in China, we have another bit of evidence that it works. And anyway it was only 15 million, pocket change for the MIC."
Not to turn this into a military strategy thread but....
There is something to be said for highly mobile anti-armor weapons in possession of the defending force, but there is ample evidence that Russia simply does not have enough manpower to use its tanks properly.
* There are many cases in which a three-crew tank is manned by two people (there is no commander).
* They don't seem to have enough cannon fodder to act as a filtering force - the perimeter around armor to make sure they are not targeted with standoff weapons.
The reports of the tank's death are greatly exaggerated.
Not to mention the ongoing proliferation of active protection systems — the Trophy APS[0] is a truly impressive[1] piece of technology.
- [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)
- [1]: https://youtu.be/uRJzcM5ETY4
Unfortunately, most classified stuff is like that. It’s a lot of e.g. boring specs of things you wouldn’t care about if you saw it.
The actual interesting stuff is more rare than Mr. Clean with hair.
The challenge of classified info is that you don't know what knowledge a potential attacker has. This is why so many things that seem either obvious or irrelevant can end up on the classified list.
Sure, details on the tungsten penetrator by themselves may be either semi-obvious or worthless (wow, it's a round that penetrates things. Shocking a tank would carry such a weapon!). But the Chinese don't know if their potential opponents in the field know something about, say, the quality of tungsten China industry can access, or if they could extrapolate something about the operation of the main gun itself from the reported penetration numbers on the tungsten round.
This is why classification tends to be a wider net than seems necessary.
> It’s a lot of e.g. boring specs of things you wouldn’t care about if you saw it.
Boring to most, maybe. But understanding the design of a shell or understanding the capabilities of a tank turret can inform armor design and battlefield tactics respectively.
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Whilst these are 'classified leaks' they are not exactly strategic leaks.
> Right now we're seeing a lot of real truth's play out in Ukraine about just how great armored vehicles and tanks are.
We're seeing "a lot of real truth's play out in Ukraine," but a lot of that seems to be about Russian organization and tactics, not necessarily "how great armored vehicles and tanks are."
For instance: early in the war I read some (US Marine Corps?) study that was online about the Russian "Battalion Tactical Group" that noted some deficiencies that may have made them far more vulnerable in Ukraine (IIRC too many tanks, too little infantry and support troops, too centralized command and control). My understanding is that it's been essential for a long time that tanks travel with significant infantry support.
> Most of the above seem more in the realm of commercial in confidence leaks, and or embarrassing information for a military than anything that's significant.
The one about the Chinese projectile seems like it could be pretty bad. Wouldn't that be the exact kind of technical information an opponent would want to design armor or develop the right tactics for it? For instance, if you increase your side's armor to neutralize it, then your tanks can fight more aggressively.
Not quite, because without the exact composition and design of the projectile you can't know for sure what is necessary unless your armor is made purely of rolled homogenous steel.
> Right now we're seeing a lot of real truth's play out in Ukraine about just how great armored vehicles and tanks are.
Was watching a video, of a guy basically explaining that tanks may be becoming less of a focus in modern armies, as new weapons and tactics easily counter them.
I guess it’s kinda like when Calvary first started to fall from its throne in warfare, due to new advancements in infantry tactics.
> a guy basically explaining that tanks may be becoming less of a focus in modern armies, as new weapons and tactics easily counter them.
Tanks will probably reduce in focus given their massive expense vs. the countermeasures but the Russian's tank losses have arisen partly because of their massive tactical incompetence and can't in themselves be taken to mean that tanks are now useless. Tanks work best when used in combined arms ops, with supporting infantry, artillery and air.
Sending columns of tanks in single file down main roads and then getting them blown up is basically the plot of "A Bridge Too Far", a.k.a Operation Market Garden in WW2, when the Allies tried to quickly cross multiple bridges into Germany, and discovered the hard way that only the tanks at the front can actually fight, and that if they get stuck, so do all of the others. Obviously the Russian commanders didn't watch this classic film when it was repeated on Sunday afternoon TV.
[Edit] That said, I wouldn't necessarily choose AFV crew if I was picking a job in an Army.
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They won't. Armchair generals think that massive losses of tanks would mean that they are going away. In real life it does not mean that. In ww2 Soviet lost 76% of all tanks they produces during the war, 83,500. And they still choose a tank focued strategic doctrine after this fact during the cold war, and they knew better than anyone else how many tank losses they suffered during ww2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_losses_in_World_War_...
So this war, the Yom Kippur, the Syria war, they have no news regarding tank losses. Tanks were never designed to be invulnerable, and their losses have never meant that they don't work. The Soviet and the Russians knows this. The west think that tank's will survive battle fields, but from a historical point of view that is a delusion. Tanks are still the least bad choice, they are faster and hit harder than infantry, which if you think AFV have it though against drone corrected artillery, infantry is a sheit site worse.
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There's a ton of minor pundits writing this lazy take. It's not a particularly compelling argument.
We've known tanks in open terrain and without infantry screening are very vulnerable to ATGMs since the Yom Kippur war. We've also seen recent examples of the same in Syria and Yemen.
A tank's utility doesn't rely upon it being somehow uncountable. We know tons of things counter tanks. But the combination of mobility, protection against shrapnel and heavy machine gun fire, and a big gun that can cheaply hit fortifications, while utterly obliterating any other armored vehicle around that's not an MBT, isn't going away any time soon.
What we're seeing is instead an increment in a long standing race between offense and defense. Reactive armor swung things towards the defense for a bit. Tandem charges and top attack munitions swung it back. Now Active Protection Systems are dragging it back the defense direction.
You had such a chance to say "first started to fall from its saddle..."
"I guess it’s kinda like when Calvary first started to fall from its throne ..."
I hope it is useful and interesting for you know:
Calvary is where Christ died.
Cavalry are the guys on horses.
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I really don't think that's a good comparison, cavalry didn't just fall from grace because they became easily slaughtered by infantry, they stopped being used because their role became irrelevant and were replaced. The role tanks play has not become irrelevant and while they aren't as survivable as they used to be they aren't nearly as vulnerable as clips from UA seem to imply.
I'd recommend this video by a former Abrams commander and tank historian who presents this argument far better than I can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI7T650RTT8
I don't think so, you will always need what tanks bring to the battlefield, it is just that the ratios may shift.
simplified to absurdity it is a sort of rock paper scissors situation.
The most economical way to project force is with infantry. the best defense from infantry are machine guns. The best offense against machine guns are armored vehicles(tanks). the most economical defense from tanks are man portable anti-tank weapons. and we have come full circle, the most economical offense to portable anti-tank weapons are infantry.
So the trick is to have your combat mix to the correct ratio.
Nearly all NATO equipment was made to fight against russian armor. Now we see its effectivenes.
I think it is quite clear that all strategy and tactics are done by US/NATO generals who tell the Ukrainian army what to do - since NATO has all its spy satelites/systems that track phones/various classified stuff pointed on the area.
And think that Trump wanted USA to leave NATO. Talk about russian assets..
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Tanks are about safely moving a big gun. Iraq war showed us it's more important to safely move people (up-armored hmmwv). Modern artillery, drones and missiles accomplish the "big gun" role better without having to get close enough to be in danger.
I don't think leaks need to have strategic implications to be significant. I'm no expert but the information on armor and APFSDS could have meaningful impacts on the survivability of a tank. Or maybe all of this is common knowledge that every relevant actor has aquired through HUMINT, who knows.
For all of the things you would find in user manuals (that operators are trained against), then yes, one would imagine such info is commonly known.
As far as I am aware, all of the information "leaked" has been of this kind (the leakers have mostly been operators!).
As a non-player. I'm confused by how and why they are getting leaked? First the how.
Are players just stumbling on this stuff through internet sleuthing? I'm sure anyone with clearance to view said documents would not be leaking them on an Tank Game Forum.
Now as to the why. Barring some sort of intelligence/counterintelligence work (conspiracy theory territory but you never know), why would this stuff get leaked? I would assume it's players wanting a more accurate experience?
My theory is it's just hardcore players/mod makers that want to mimics every real life detail of the real tanks. The info being leaked has likely already been "leaked" but somewhere not as visible as the WarThunder forums, so we only hear about it when it pops up there.
> I'm sure anyone with clearance to view said documents would not be leaking them on an Tank Game Forum.
Out of everyone in the population, who do you think is most likely to be a hardcore player/mod maker for WarThunder? Is it:
(A) John Teenager, taking a gap year to play video games and scour double-digit pages on Bing for details on new tanks, stumbling across mailing lists and unsecured Slack channels from third-party suppliers
(B) James Bond, foreign counterintelligence operative who hacked into the DoD and forgot which specs were public and which ones he only knew from his hacking efforts
(C) GI Joe, tank maintenance tech, who just really likes tanks, so much so that he got a job working on them and plays video games that involve tanks in his spare time.
I'm a controls engineer and programmer, and yeah, some of my hobbies involve my experience; I'm pretty skilled with Arduinos, 3D printers, and Minecraft redstone. Is an Arduino sketch that drives a stepper using the same set of signals as a brand-new, NDAed, proprietary Fanuc servodrive a problem in the same way classified specs for a military tank a problem? Not really, anyone who knows about servos would build the same basic API but that's the order of encoder values, commanded positions, acceleration/velocity/travel limits, and home/limit switches etc. that I'm familiar with, so why not?
Don’t underestimate the butthurt of a nerd trying to win an online argument. I think for one of the challenger leaks the dude was trying to win a stupid forum argument
The Techspot article on this goes into a bit more detail on the other leaks (https://www.techspot.com/news/94803-gaijin-war-thunder-forum...) but generally yes, it's people with clearance who are players of the game and want to get something in game corrected to be more like reality.
> it's people with clearance who are players of the game and want to get something in game corrected to be more like reality.
While i get the good intentions here, this is shockingly short sighted for players (with classified access) to be doing this.
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Milsim nerds can be incredibly particular and either end up having access to such documents through their work, or merely find and post documents they come across online. The struggle to win an online argument can result in a shocking amount of research fueled on nothing by pettiness and bitter nerd-rage tears.
Example about the availability of publicly available classified information: During the time when the Wikileaks stuff was first starting, Military personnel were instructed not to read articles or even headlines about Wikileaks, because they might contain classified information. Given that there would then be an issue with "need to know", reading the newspaper could inadvertently cause one to violate policy, and in turn require the violator to file a report on the matter. Rather than deal with however many reports, people were simply given a lawful order: Do not read any information pertaining to the subject.
Anyway, back to the point about nerds: If a guy is attempting to rotate the turret of a tank he spent 1.5 years grinding to get, and he knows that in real life his turret should rotate at a certain speed, but in game it actually takes longer to turn, and he dies as a result, the chance of him whining about it online is probable. Rinse and repeat this a few hundred times, and cost him potentially 10-20 million Silver Lions (free in-game currency) in repair costs, lost battles, etc. then you better believe he's going to get really salty about it. He's either going to say some things he shouldn't be saying (unlikely, but not impossible), or, he's going to find and link to documents that shouldn't be publicly available.
In turn, other nerds will notice this, report it due to the policies around classified information. Eventually it becomes a big to-do about something that was already accessible, but not necessarily well known.
AFAIK none of these leaks have come from those sorts of sources, they're from tank crewmen publishing classified docs for their own tanks
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It’s funny to think that the purported justification for the order against reading Wikileaks news was actually believed by anyone who heard it.
“Don’t read this - it’s for your own good! Just reading it could cause you to have to report against yourself! No really!”
Total rubbish of course.
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As a Warthunder player myself, that is basically the reason. Most players like the game to be as realistic as possible, and some players really like a specific nation. When they see a vehicle under-performing, they try to dig up data and documents confirming so, which is then passed to the developers.
Problem is, for modern vehicles a lot of this info is classified, but some players seem to be persistent enough to get that info and try to use it.
There's a really great writeup of one incident on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/owtzl9/video_ga...
The question that randomly comes to mind from this is "is it proper to refer to a sabot-mounted solid penetrator as a "shell"? I always thought a shell was strictly used to refer to hollow projectiles?