Comment by lumost
4 years ago
Yes, while the basic mechanics aren't particularly sensitive in 2022. The exact details with regards to range, penetrating power, accuracy, weight are.
Given this information an adversary can adjust tactics to engage at a range that's more optimal for their rounds, recognize that they should use alternate longer range strikes, or devise long term mitigations.
Given that all of the above actions are expensive, it's a lot easier to take them when you have the exact specs. The problem is even worse with air to air missiles where pilots can be trained to counter most missiles if they have the exact performance characteristics.
So if you release fake specs understating your stats you get enemies coming into range for free ?
You may also make an adversary believe they have a much larger advantage then they do, inviting a conflict.
There is substantial debate as to whether the open development of projects such as the f-35 is beneficial or harmful compress to the secret development of things like the J-20. The congressional interrogations of Lockheed Likely help ensure that the f-35 works as advertised, but adversaries gain insight into the development timeline, problems, and more specs than they would have otherwise.
> The congressional interrogations of Lockheed Likely help ensure that the f-35 works as advertised
I am under the impression the f-35 will never deliver what was advertised since it was a sales effort based on fantasy physics. It probably is delivering the actual intended effect, which is transferring money from taxpayers to military contractors and job votes for certain senators.
9 replies →
Yes, and published specs of weapons are likely to be misleading or outright lies for that reason
I even worked with military simulators, and they themselves are segregated. The simpler ones use the "marketing" figures for secret stuff (the thing I specifically remember was range for air-to-air robots and turn capabilities etc), whereas some might use the real figures. I don't think even the most high fidelity simulators always use 100% accurate info, especially when it comes to radar stuff which is very very well guarded. Even though a lot of the code can be identical to the "flying code" for aircraft, there is still a lot of physical stuff that needs to be specifically modelled.
Given the actual harddisk size compared with advertised and how nutritional value and calories in supermarket foods are often misleading, it can be safe to say that the specification is hard to be believed.
Not against anyone competent. If your opponents are taking a single photo leaked on Reddit at face value, then you're going to have an easy time.
You should always overstate your capabilities not understate them.
Rubbish. It depends on what you want to make your opponent do.
Or do both so that you are not predictable.
I'm sure the enemy rocket designers will look at whether your specs make sense given their own experience.
To an extent. But weapon specifications often have pretty gigantic error bars on them.
After all, the range of a tank gun isn't just a question of how far it can send a shell - it's also a question of how well the gun can be aimed, how hard the shells have to hit when they arrive, and whether the 'effective' in 'effective range' means a 20% chance of a kill or a 90% chance.
By messing around with those definitions, the M1 Abrams tank has a range of anything from 2,500m to 4000m to 8000m. Pretty hard to sanity-check such a wide range of figures.