Ever wonder how to "interact with the local populace" when you travel somewhere? Well, here's how it's done:
- Be prepared to discuss your personal interests (hobbies, books, travel).
- Be sensitive to your body language.
-> Smile as long as it is appropriate.
-> Avoid sitting with your arms crossed.
-> Do not show the bottom of your feet in an Arabic culture.
-> Keep your hands away from your mouth.
-> Lean forward and nod.
-> Make frequent eye contact (if culturally appropriate).
- Use the person's name, position title, rank, and/or other verbal expressions of respect.
...
- Remember, a person's favorite topic is himself
...
WARNING - This document contains technical data whose export is restricted by the Arms Export Control Act (Title 22, U.S.C., Sec 2751, et seq.) or the Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, Title 50 U.S.C., App. 2401 et seq. Violation of these export laws are subject to severe criminal penalties. Disseminate in accordance with provisions of DoD Directive 5230.25.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT D - Distribution authorized to the Department of Defense and DoD contractors only due to critical technology. This determination was made on 26 June 2000. Other requests for this document shall be referred to Commander, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, ATTN: SFAE-AV-AAH- ATH, Redstone Arsenal, AL 35898 - 5000.
DESTRUCTION NOTICE - Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.
You can only hope that the uploader is who they say they are...
You are not committing a crime or doing anything special by finding and sharing this information (/unless/ you are read in to whatever program may or may not require one to protect it).
I don't know why they would want to prevent it. It's free publicity for them with no consequences. They just have to make sure to delete it eventually.
Train a ML model as a classified document classifier and scan everything through that... now they just need to dig through their archives for the training set from all the past leaks.
Isn't there standard text on these? On a cover page and/or headers/footers?
I get that the content of the documents is not known, but I would think the structure of them is known and could be matched on. Perhaps specific phrases that are only likely to appear in military documents, or a classification level in a header/footer, or even some specific combination of font, font weight, line spacing and indentation.
They could maybe even slurp up the text from PDF's they blocked to prevent someone from posting similar plaintext. Probably not, though, because an endpoint that says whether something is or isn't classified is basically a classified document generator with enough time or clever tricks.
Then just forward the reports to whatever country's military owns those docs (or let the company's government do that). I think War Thunder only needs to make a nominal effort; the various militaries of the world will take care of backing it up with a dire threat.
Not really much of a conspiracy there, most of the "leaks" are technically public info NATO documents, War Thunder's developer doesn't want to touch ANYTHING that might have been classified at one point.
That is almost certainly what is happening. There are tens of millions of Westerners who are sympathetic towards the adversaries of the West (primarily Russia).
Does anybody understand why this happens within the War Thunder community? It's not like War Thunder is a hardcode simulator - why on earth do the players need real manuals anyway?
Why does this not happen for DCS or any of the much more serious simulators?
The real reason this is always happening for Warthunder is because it's being sensationalized by the media and what's happening is being massively misrepresented.
Every time one of these articles comes out for like the last 6 months at least the "leaked classified documents" have already been available online for _years_. But someone posts these easily findable documents on the Warthunder forums and suddenly the leak originates from the Warthunder forums because it makes a good article title.
Has it happened in DCS in the past? I know of the instance where an Eagle Dynamics employee got nabbed due to possessing documents but I don't know of an instance where a community member has posted docs publicly.
1. Jeez the Panther fires slow for a tank with one of the first auto loaders.
2. Wow other people have the same complaint
3. Statement from the developers that they have used the reload times from a technical document written by the french after ww2, where they disassembled and tested a panther for the government
4. Hang on that panther specifcally had its autoloader removed, and was piloted by untrained people.
5. Located a locked thread with pages and pages of technical data, arguments about russian tank favoritism, and ultimately no change.
The devs bring it on themselves by being very much in love with russian hardware, and being very picky about their sources. They also participate in the conversation and that leads to people trying to prove they are wrong.
I think it's the fact that War Thunder is less serious than hardcore sims that makes all the difference. The sort of person who is into a "real sim" and values the experience of reproducing the "real" experience is also relatively aware of the culture around military technology. You know it would be potentially bad for you to post classified stuff and you probably understand why "not for export" and "top secret" are different classes of information and why you want two classes of information. You respect the information hierarchy that these systems of secrecy respect - and part of that respect means you enjoy really flipping all of the knobs on an Apache. You probably have access to these documents but you would never be so gauche as to post them on a public forum.
On the other hand, if you mostly enjoy military hardware in a semiotic and arcade-y way, all official documents simply represent potential ammunition to win internet arguments. You aren't aware of the baroque system of different kinds of secrecy and if you heard of itt you would think it was silly. If the information is "out there" already why wouldn't you post it to settle an internet argument? Surely if you can get your hands on it then any potential enemy has as well.
If the US military's aircraft information is so incredibly important and secret, how the hell did it end up in the possession of some civilian gaming forum users? Maybe they should just add it to Wikipedia already and call it a day.
> Why does this not happen for DCS or any of the much more serious simulators?
Size of the player base? I imagine there are an order of magnitude more daily WT players than there are DCS players, for instance.
And while WT isn't a hardcore simulation, it is detailed enough that obscure technical details can make a difference in gameplay balance, combine that with someone salty about getting blown up in a situation they shouldn't ("the game has that panel 12mm too thin and 3 degrees off, the round actually would have bounced!") and obsessing over their favorite piece of Olive Drab steel, well, we find ourselves in this situation. Yet again.
I would get all that, for a hardcore sim. Back in the day there was an F-16 Falcon simulator where people regularly used real (old) manuals to learn how to just start the aircraft.
But I have doubts War Thunder is modeled accurately enough for a real service manual to actually make any difference for any of the players. War Thunder, from appearances, looks very arcadey and designed to be fun for most players. Sims usually involve 20 minute startup sequences, weight balance shifting, etc... I just don't understand this with War Thunder.
> It's not like War Thunder is a hardcode simulator
People work themselves into prison due to stalking and death threats to game developers over balance issues; "what my in-game tank can and can't do" is a balance issue, even if it isn't a sim.
I heard that in the present day that is mostly irrelevant. The hard part is procuring adequate fissile material more than designing the bomb. Maybe an ICBM design would help North Korea?
It didn't take me a whole lot of effort to find a document with the "Distribution authorized to Department of Defense and DoD contractors only due to critical technology" disclaimer: https://www.scribd.com/doc/102459342/US-Army-Apache-Longbow-...
First result on https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22AH-64D+Apache+Longbow%22...
I am available for hire as a spy.
Found this funny one by Googling a similar string:
SOLDIER SURVEILLANCE AND RECONNAISSANCE: FUNDAMENTALS OF TACTICAL INFORMATION COLLECTION: https://www.scribd.com/document/99352146/FM-2-91-6-Soldier-S...
Ever wonder how to "interact with the local populace" when you travel somewhere? Well, here's how it's done:
Last week I binged enough of “Big Bang theory” so it all seem reasonable as I read it.
Your argument doesn't hold: who was the person that uploaded the document? That person is hireable as a spy.
From one of the opening pages:
WARNING - This document contains technical data whose export is restricted by the Arms Export Control Act (Title 22, U.S.C., Sec 2751, et seq.) or the Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, Title 50 U.S.C., App. 2401 et seq. Violation of these export laws are subject to severe criminal penalties. Disseminate in accordance with provisions of DoD Directive 5230.25.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT D - Distribution authorized to the Department of Defense and DoD contractors only due to critical technology. This determination was made on 26 June 2000. Other requests for this document shall be referred to Commander, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, ATTN: SFAE-AV-AAH- ATH, Redstone Arsenal, AL 35898 - 5000.
DESTRUCTION NOTICE - Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.
You can only hope that the uploader is who they say they are...
You are not committing a crime or doing anything special by finding and sharing this information (/unless/ you are read in to whatever program may or may not require one to protect it).
The crime was performed by the performed leaker.
s/spy/spy-hunter/ ;)
For War Thunder he can be a spy-war
"No way to prevent this," says only forum where this regularly happens
People replying to this part of the thread may not be getting the satirical reference to The Onion
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=the+onion...
I don't know why they would want to prevent it. It's free publicity for them with no consequences. They just have to make sure to delete it eventually.
Best example of we've tried nothing and we're out of ideas
They shouldn't have to prevent it.
do you have any actionable suggestions aside from moderator-approved messages or turning the forum read-only?
information suppression is pretty tough work, especially when you're trying to suppress the unknown.
Train a ML model as a classified document classifier and scan everything through that... now they just need to dig through their archives for the training set from all the past leaks.
3 replies →
Isn't there standard text on these? On a cover page and/or headers/footers?
I get that the content of the documents is not known, but I would think the structure of them is known and could be matched on. Perhaps specific phrases that are only likely to appear in military documents, or a classification level in a header/footer, or even some specific combination of font, font weight, line spacing and indentation.
They could maybe even slurp up the text from PDF's they blocked to prevent someone from posting similar plaintext. Probably not, though, because an endpoint that says whether something is or isn't classified is basically a classified document generator with enough time or clever tricks.
Then just forward the reports to whatever country's military owns those docs (or let the company's government do that). I think War Thunder only needs to make a nominal effort; the various militaries of the world will take care of backing it up with a dire threat.
1 reply →
Probably the only thing they could do to fix this problem for good is to basically not include any modern equipment at all.
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Would it be possible that these leaks happen on purpose?
Not really much of a conspiracy there, most of the "leaks" are technically public info NATO documents, War Thunder's developer doesn't want to touch ANYTHING that might have been classified at one point.
That is almost certainly what is happening. There are tens of millions of Westerners who are sympathetic towards the adversaries of the West (primarily Russia).
1 reply →
Does anybody understand why this happens within the War Thunder community? It's not like War Thunder is a hardcode simulator - why on earth do the players need real manuals anyway?
Why does this not happen for DCS or any of the much more serious simulators?
It has happened for DCS in the past.
The real reason this is always happening for Warthunder is because it's being sensationalized by the media and what's happening is being massively misrepresented.
Every time one of these articles comes out for like the last 6 months at least the "leaked classified documents" have already been available online for _years_. But someone posts these easily findable documents on the Warthunder forums and suddenly the leak originates from the Warthunder forums because it makes a good article title.
One of the more recent "leaks" was just someone posting this easily purchasable flight manual: https://www.flight-manuals-online.com/product/eurofighter-ty...
Has it happened in DCS in the past? I know of the instance where an Eagle Dynamics employee got nabbed due to possessing documents but I don't know of an instance where a community member has posted docs publicly.
1 reply →
Only played briefly, but my experience was:
1. Jeez the Panther fires slow for a tank with one of the first auto loaders.
2. Wow other people have the same complaint
3. Statement from the developers that they have used the reload times from a technical document written by the french after ww2, where they disassembled and tested a panther for the government
4. Hang on that panther specifcally had its autoloader removed, and was piloted by untrained people.
5. Located a locked thread with pages and pages of technical data, arguments about russian tank favoritism, and ultimately no change.
The devs bring it on themselves by being very much in love with russian hardware, and being very picky about their sources. They also participate in the conversation and that leads to people trying to prove they are wrong.
Panthers never had autoloaders
1 reply →
I think it's the fact that War Thunder is less serious than hardcore sims that makes all the difference. The sort of person who is into a "real sim" and values the experience of reproducing the "real" experience is also relatively aware of the culture around military technology. You know it would be potentially bad for you to post classified stuff and you probably understand why "not for export" and "top secret" are different classes of information and why you want two classes of information. You respect the information hierarchy that these systems of secrecy respect - and part of that respect means you enjoy really flipping all of the knobs on an Apache. You probably have access to these documents but you would never be so gauche as to post them on a public forum.
On the other hand, if you mostly enjoy military hardware in a semiotic and arcade-y way, all official documents simply represent potential ammunition to win internet arguments. You aren't aware of the baroque system of different kinds of secrecy and if you heard of itt you would think it was silly. If the information is "out there" already why wouldn't you post it to settle an internet argument? Surely if you can get your hands on it then any potential enemy has as well.
If the US military's aircraft information is so incredibly important and secret, how the hell did it end up in the possession of some civilian gaming forum users? Maybe they should just add it to Wikipedia already and call it a day.
1 reply →
> Why does this not happen for DCS or any of the much more serious simulators?
Size of the player base? I imagine there are an order of magnitude more daily WT players than there are DCS players, for instance.
And while WT isn't a hardcore simulation, it is detailed enough that obscure technical details can make a difference in gameplay balance, combine that with someone salty about getting blown up in a situation they shouldn't ("the game has that panel 12mm too thin and 3 degrees off, the round actually would have bounced!") and obsessing over their favorite piece of Olive Drab steel, well, we find ourselves in this situation. Yet again.
It’s amazing how much happens because a nerd (positive term) gets angry because of something not technically correct or difficult
3 replies →
I would get all that, for a hardcore sim. Back in the day there was an F-16 Falcon simulator where people regularly used real (old) manuals to learn how to just start the aircraft.
But I have doubts War Thunder is modeled accurately enough for a real service manual to actually make any difference for any of the players. War Thunder, from appearances, looks very arcadey and designed to be fun for most players. Sims usually involve 20 minute startup sequences, weight balance shifting, etc... I just don't understand this with War Thunder.
4 replies →
> It's not like War Thunder is a hardcode simulator
People work themselves into prison due to stalking and death threats to game developers over balance issues; "what my in-game tank can and can't do" is a balance issue, even if it isn't a sim.
DCS has its own share of drama:
https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/15/18623545/eagle-dynamics-f-...
> Does anybody understand why this happens within the War Thunder community?
At this point its more about the meme than the actual game
These have, as have all the prior "leaks" this year, been available for years already.
They are publicly available in many places, like public intelligence and various mega shares.
Many of the recent ones are as you say, "not leaks".
However the Challenger Tank one was real https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/classified-challenger-tank-s...
Yup, the tank turret rotation speed was indeed a classified document, but that was 2 years ago.
Not that I don't wish that there wouldn't be more leaks, the info is juicy even if almost always pretty simple
It has been [ 0 ] days since the last classified document leak on the War Thunder forums.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone posted detailed blueprints of a modern thermonuclear weapon just to win an argument. :)
I heard that in the present day that is mostly irrelevant. The hard part is procuring adequate fissile material more than designing the bomb. Maybe an ICBM design would help North Korea?
2 replies →
Third time this month, so yeah almost.
For those keeping score at home, this is the thirteenth time this has happened.
How long before an adversary reaches mod status and is able to see new submissions to the forum?
Thats what happened to Silk Road
except then those government agents went rogue and went to prison too
> Here is the official us government status about declassification of the document.
> If the user was blocked please reinstate his account and his post, as the manual is FULLY UNCLASSIFIED.
Bona fide clown. "FULLY UNCLASSIFIED" doesn't mean shit[1].
[1] https://www.esd.whs.mil/portals/54/documents/dd/issuances/do...
Hahaha I thought this was a repost at first that's awesome!
I wonder if some of this leaks are fromn people paid, threatened or otherwise "moved by external forces" to do the leak
None more foolish than the man in the grip of a desire to win an argument on the Internet.
It has been in service almost forty years, around the world and with multiple militaries.
To a reasonable probability there aren’t any deep secrets left.
Regardless, that it keeps happening is never not funny.
Depends. Flight characteristics? Probably not. Sensors? Perhaps. They just unveiled a new mast this month.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/this-is-what-the-ah-64...
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