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.
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 ..."
"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.
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.
We've seen armour designs designed to stop them (reactive armour, and statistical armour [1]). Understanding the exact properties and design of the projectiles you're trying to stop is important for making these, for instance statistical armour is really designed to trick a specific fuse system into not firing.
Armour has not entirely lost the war, and even if some day it does, there's nothing saying that some new innovation won't let it catch back up.
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.
The Russians have all the history they need about tank losses. They suffered 76% tank losses during ww2, 83,500 tanks. You think they are stupid and don't know any better. But they have known all the facts sense ww2, it's just the nature of modern war (from ww2 where AFV were used) that you are going to suffer high losses, that doesn't mean that you don't try to attack.
>You think they are stupid and don't know any better
The entire invasion demonstrates massive tactical & strategic incompetence, which is only possible when you're a mafia state.
>it's just the nature of modern war (from ww2 where AFV were used) that you are going to suffer high losses
Russia planned to roll in and take Kyiv. They appeared to have no contingencies for this not succeeding and that's why they're taking heavy losses. On paper, they should have cut through Ukraine like a knife through hot butter.
Comparing loss rates from a 6-year all-out war to a 3-month "special military operation" is, of course, incredibly disingenuous.
In just three months Russia has lost at least a quarter of their combat ready tanks (~750 documented losses vs <3000 combat ready tanks), in a campaign that was supposed to be over in 15 days. This is clearly not going according to plan. This is clearly not in line with whatever "facts" the Russian military leadership "knew" going into the war.
They also had the hellish experiences in Grozny. They aren't unaware of the vulnerabilities of tanks, but a combination of lack of material resources, operational incompetence, and apparently political interference in military planning is keeping them from really fighting according to their own doctrine.
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.
They utilized other recent events, including the Marine cooler opting to drop all their tanks (I’ll bet my father was thrilled at that)
But you’re probably right that this is an armchair general making guesstimations. He did have military experience, but not in any capacity that would make him an expert in tank warfare.
FWIW cavalry (as in my analogy) didn’t really die off for a very long time and was still useful in armies for some time, but they were not the symbol and main power of armies that they used to.
The marines are dumping tanks as part of a re orientation to be a true marine island hopping force in the pacific. There's debate over whether this is a viable concept in total, but little debate whether tanks make sense in that environment.
When there's 152mm 100lb shrapnel artillery bombs dropping all around you, the only safe location is inside of 200mm+ thick steel plates.
Or what? Are you going to hide inside of a trench all day, or get into a thin APC / IFV and get shredded before you even reach the front lines?
Armor still matters. The whole MLRS debate has demonstrated that the powers-that-be are worried about the artillery battle above all else (as is common in war, those 20km guns are called "the king of battle" for a reason).
Advancing, or retreating, to positions while 100lb shrapnel bombs scatter around you is only possible when inside of armor. APCs/IFVs have a bit, but Tanks have the most.
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Walking around, on foot, with only a helmet and some kevlar is nothing compared to the amount of shrapnel that is in play in any of those warzones. The shear number of 152mm artillery rounds being used is insane, and plainly obvious from the terrain in any footage I've seen.
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Tanks also remain the largest direct-fire gun on the battlefield, and have repeatedly proven their usefulness. Drones fly at 50mph and can take 10+ minutes to reach position. (Air Force/support flies faster, but also has 10+ minutes of delay as the pilots prep and launch).
Artillery fires at much higher speeds, but still takes 1 to 2 minutes for the shell to land.
Tank guns? They fire and land near instantly upon the target. If you need immediate fire support, the only solution is a tank. All other forms of support have a significant delay. All other guns are way smaller (ex: Sniper Rifles or Browning Machine Guns can't kill enemy tanks, for example).
ATGMs are single-shot and 50lbs. They're hard to carry around the battlefield, and the people carrying them aren't carrying much else.
Furthermore: Tanks provide 40+ shots upon their call, and tanks easily maneuver around the battlefield at 30mph or faster.
Finally, Tanks have 3000m to 4000m range. Javelin only has 3000m range, while NLAW only has 1000m range. The tank is faster, the tank is more maneuverable, the tank is better armored, the tank has more range, the tank has more bullets, the tank has bigger shots (120mm rounds blow a bigger hole in the enemy than Javelins do). When the tank fires, their shells travel at literally hypersonic (Mach5) speeds. There's various stories of how tank-commanders saw an enemy's ATGM, fires back with the main cannon, and pops their thermal-smoke grenades to avoid the missile.
At 2000m or 3000m range, its really hard to actually fight a competent tank crew. Even if you are provided with the best of the best weapons (an NLAW is fully outranged and outgunned)
To carry similar firepower to a tank, you'll need 40 troops, each carrying a 50lb Javelin into the battlefield. Sure, the tank can die to one Javelin, but your 40 troops can all die to a few 152mm shells... and troops don't have the luxury of sitting in a vehicle (troops carrying 50lb weapons move slower than the armored cars we call "tanks"). Nor do they have immunity to sniper rifles or machine gun fire.
And once you have those troops in position, there's still the problem of the innate slowness of the ATGMs compared to tank APFSDS / HE-frag rounds. Yes, rockets are fast, but tank-rounds are far far faster.
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No one can deny the shear offensive prowess of the tank on the modern battlefield. ATGMs are very good tools as well, but even they pale compared to a tank APFSDS round or HE-frag round from a tank.
Now those benefits are negated in urban environments. Close quarters combat, within 500m or 200m is common, as ambushes can be setup anywhere. But still, the tank's role is needed in these urban environments. The 120mm tank gun is the only weapon that can repeatedly blow up squads who are hiding inside of a house for example. (It'd be too expensive to use ATGMs vs a house, but its not that expensive to use tank HE-frag or APFSDS rounds).
> ATGMs are single-shot and 50lbs. They're hard to carry around the battlefield, and the people carrying them aren't carrying much else.
This seems to ignore the infantry shield required for armour. Not to mention the logistical chain.
> Furthermore: Tanks provide 40+ shots upon their call, and tanks easily maneuver around the battlefield at 30mph or faster.
This seems to ignore the infantry shield required for armour. Not to mention the logistical chain.
> To carry similar firepower to a tank, you'll need 40 troops, each carrying a 50lb Javelin into the battlefield.
This seems to ignore the infantry shield required for armour. Not to mention the logistical chain.
> and troops don't have the luxury of sitting in a vehicle (troops carrying 50lb weapons move slower than the armored cars we call "tanks").
This seems to ignore the infantry shield required for armour.
> No one can deny the shear offensive prowess of the tank on the modern battlefield.
This seems to ignore all those denying the sheer offensive prowess of the tank in the modern world.
> The 120mm tank gun is the only weapon that can repeatedly blow up squads who are hiding inside of a house for example. (It'd be too expensive to use ATGMs vs a house, but its not that expensive to use tank HE-frag or APFSDS rounds).
This seems to ignore the existence of the recoilless rifle (and an uncountable number of mounted weapons).
Overall, I don't believe you have any first-hand insight or understanding of armour or combined arms operations.
Anyone can plainly see footage of M1147 AMP and compare it against any footage of the Carl Gustav 84mm and see that the firepower is incomparable.
I don't need experience to see the difference between the two weapons. Speed, penetration, range, accuracy. Completely incomparable.
Tanks were shooting 3000m in the 80s and have probably gotten better. Carl Gustav needs laser guidance for 2000m and even then is still outranged by decades old tanks.
> There's various stories of how tank-commanders saw an enemy's ATGM, fires back with the main cannon, and pops their thermal-smoke grenades to avoid the missile.
I call bullshit. Yes, a Javelin at maximum range takes 10 seconds to arrive, and that theoretically gives the turret time to traverse to target and return fire… Assuming the commander saw the puff of smoke appear and reacts instantly… with perfect knowledge of the distance of the engagement… and full confidence his countermeasures will be 100% effective…
Naw. Too big a risk to take out 2 dudes who just expended their only means to hurt you, and are already on the move anyway. His attached units can go after the ATGM squad.
Javelin? Not quite. But yes for sure with M47 Dragon systems. (Especially back then, if you killed the guy aiming the missile, the missile will almost certainly miss).
In any case, Javelin is thermal imaging and thermal smoke probably works as a countermeasure.
The speed of ATGMs is a major downside in any case, leaving room to react and for smoke countermeasures.
A Russian tank using Russian "combined-arms" doctrine that sends me into a city completely unsupported? That's going to be a big "no" from me.
An American tank using American combined-arms doctrine? Well, it's not going to be a risk-free experience, but I'd rather be in the tank than be one of the bullet sponges who are fighting house-to-house to prevent the enemy bullet sponges from sticking an AT-4 out of a window.
As other people have noted, "survivability" doesn't really factor into military thinking so much as capabilities. Bullets are extremely lethal to infantrymen, but we still have infantry because infantrymen have capabilities that other equipment platforms do not have. The existence of machine guns doesn't remove the need for infantry; it just changes how they have to be used (more cover and concealment, more need for air, artillery, and tank support). The same is true for tanks - they have capabilities that no other platform can satisfactorily fulfill, so we will continue to have tanks even if anti-armor weapons become even more effective than they already are.
Would you prefer to climb into a IFV or a pickup-based technical instead?
Even with all the drawbacks and vulnerabilities, tanks have more staying power than other vehicles, and if you need to do an offensive where it's expected that quite a few of you will die no matter if you advance in vehicles or on foot (peer-level war it's not like insurgent control where having casualties implies a mistake or failure on someone's part) then tanks are the vehicles which allow your to continue advancing while taking fire and some vehicles are lost; a APC company or bunch of technicals can only evade and retreat when meeting serious resistance; tanks are needed to be able to punch through.
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.
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 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..
>And think that Trump wanted USA to leave NATO. Talk about russian assets..
Speaking of Russian assets, there are still people that say that Merkel was always against German dependence on Russian gas but could not do anything about it. For 16 years!
There is more "evidence" that Merkel is a long-term Russian intelligence asset, recruited from her youth in East Germany,[1] than that of Trump being the same. One guess on which claim is incessantly repeated by the bien-pensants of the chattering classes.
Bonus: Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?
[1] Something else never talked about is how her parents moved from West to East Germany when she was a baby
Not to support Trump here, but taken the other way, look at how much value and effectiveness America is bringing to the NATO table. And the cost of having access to that power was a mere 2% of GDP (something that many EU countries that were incredibly reluctant to meet are now increasing frantically to make up for lost time).
it was a perfectly valid argument (and Trump made it into an idiotic talking point in his typical dumbfuck aggressive tantrum style)
the important aspect to keep in mind with other NATO members slacking on their own defense is that it directly increases US influence over them. basically the US and those other members semi-knowingly traded dependence and a to a certain degree subservience for protection.
I don't see how it directly increases US influence over them? America is compelled to defend those NATO members, no matter how rag-tag or inadequate those NATO members' forces are. America doesn't have the option of saying "no", and they also cop all of the public backlash as these countries get to stir up anti-American sentiments and make life hard for American forces that are rotated through these countries for training.
defending someone is not a binary thing. the amount of effort, the degree of severity, the number of troops mobilized, the whole question of use of nukes (tactical or strategic)
and there are real problems around bases (~18-20 year olds on leave are going to do what they are usually do anyway)
and the last few decades of US interventionism is not exactly a success story. it was not hard to stir up "anti-imperialist" sentiment
> Nearly all NATO equipment was made to fight against russian armor. Now we see its effectivenes.
To go along with this, when Americans train, we mainly practice for peer-combatants, against Russian armor. That means a whole bunch of light infantry, mechanized infantry, combat engineers, calvary and armor, as well as all of our air assets, know how to make it really dangerous for armor. Aka a shooting gallery.
> 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.
Perhaps at the macro level there is some advice going on, info about positions and definitely tooling.
However, when I've seen videos of Russian armor getting hit by infantry, in most cases it was merely columns driving on a road with no support, and some anti-armor missiles hitting them on their flanks. Armor emerging from a treeline in an open area perfect for a long range missile shot from a TOW, no support anywhere. Basically, newb mistakes.
In all the videos I have seen, and have watched lots, I have yet to see a full "American style" ambush. I think it may be dangerous for this to happen, because if Russia was regularly losing large amounts of tanks, it would make it that much more likely that they'd go Nuclear. Another reason for this may be Russian responses to various things can include using artillery or missiles against > a grid square.
> And think that Trump wanted USA to leave NATO. Talk about russian assets..
That was a negotiating tactic. The only way the euros have managed to have such rich social spending is in part, not keeping their promises about contribution levels. The US cannot afford to pick up the tab for everyone's defense in Europe.
Meanwhile Trump’s tactic pushed some euro countries to finally increase military spending at least a tiny bit. But most euro militaries are still in a bad shape :(
All good apart from that euro part at the end - 2% required contribution doesnt bite into social spending in any meaningful way, not in fully working economy.
We in europe simply value quality of life of whole population more than individual income.
Germans (and some other western EU states) fucked up this, no point arguing there. Self-trauma from WWII that even Putin said should be left in the past.
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.
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 less "good intentions" and more butthurt that the tank that they work on isn't as powerful in the game as they think it should be.
Think of a sports fan complaining that their favorite player is rated too low by Madden or FIFA's video game representation of the stats. "Whaddya mean that Justin Herbert is only rated 91, he should be rated 97!" Except instead of pointing to some box scores on ProFootballReference to attack the naysayers, you leak classified intelligence.
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.
I wonder if DARPA et al will decide that the leaks are just the price they pay for having soldiers spend their free time fooling around in simulators with tanks they actually operate.
I was on a camp trip one time with a bunch of Spooks, and the mental gymnastics they went through to justify spying on regular people was nauseating. I can imagine the directive to avoid reading any news also gives you a one sided view about the subject.
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.
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?
That's a really interesting design, as it looks like it was inspired by metal broaching tools where each of those rings acts like a cutter to slightly enlarge the hole made by the ring before it.
It makes sense that a penetrator would use that technique as it's designed to clear the chip debris, as opposed to trying to deform the bulk hardened material, allowing far easier penetration and perhaps more energy transfer to the inside of the target.
In the diagram behind the tungsten penetrator, only the part of the penetrator that contacts the sabot has rings on it, while the rest of the projectile is drawn as smooth. The rings might have something to do with helping the sabot separate from the projectile correctly or preventing the projectile from slipping out of the sabot before it leaves the barrel.
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.
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.
Which makes you wonder, how badly are the secret fighter jet programs intended to compete with the F-35 or similar stealth planes actually going?
The MIG-25's capabilities were famously misinterpreted by western intelligence, resulting in the creation of the F-15 Eagle. Undoubtedly similar confusions resulted in the F-22 program through the 1980s.
> 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 will deliver, though. Because the physics don't matter nearly as much - unless you are talking about radar signature physics. Aircraft today are mobile ordnance delivery platforms. Those Top Gun air to air stunts? Unlikely to happen. Supermaneuvarability stuff doesn't matter at all if you are getting hit before you even know the enemy is there. Or you might know, because one F35 has the radar on, only to get hit from a completely different aircraft that's getting the data link.
What does matter is getting in undetected (while coordinating with your peers), delivering your payload, getting back out. Or doing recon, etc.
They are most likely talking about radar signature physics. Stealth to lower frequency radar requires physically implausible materials. So does the supposedly undetectable radar of the F-35. Plenty of physics-bending specs.
> They are most likely talking about radar signature physics. Stealth to lower frequency radar requires physically implausible materials.
But then the question moves to: what are the weaknesses of those lower frequency radars, and can those be exploited to restore the advantage of the stealth features? The admittedly not-great Wikipedia page about low frequency radar seems to indicate it has a lot of disadvantages like being difficult to transport, prone to noise, and not being precise enough for targeting.
Advances in missile technology, specifically Track Via Missile, means that they don't need to be precise enough for targeting anymore, they can be off by 100-200m+, but as long as the velocity measurement is good, the missile can fly in the neighborhood, acquire the target, and cooperate with the radar to confirm that they are locked into the same target and maintain a perfect track. They are definitely difficult to transport compared to others, but they are now small enough to be integrated into a truck, and communication is good enough they can segmented into more modules that can be on different vehicles and still work, greatly increasing transportability and survivability (the antenna is cheap, so it can be almost sacrificial as long as the processing is done elsewhere). Susceptibility to noise is a much lesser concern now due to the generalization of AESA technology.
We can now also do sensor fusion, so a low frequency radar can communicate with other radars and even higher frequency radars that wouldn't be able to detect the target in search mode but could obtain some data in track mode to obtain almost perfect accuracy, make it difficult to evade, provide redundancy, defeat jamming, and discriminate against decoys and chaff, as well as provide bistatic capability and help in noncooperative identification. Also crucial is to defeat stealthy antiradar weapons an F-35 might fire in self protection by tracking them from a direction they might not be stealthy in and provide warning or even targeting information to shoot down.
Integrated air defences are very scary, and it's actually incredibly concerning for the USAF that they never fought against a real IADS. Russia is doing so right now in Ukraine and it's clearly not easy even against 40+ year old systems not even being used as designed, and for the same reason no Ukrainian fixed wing has been able to launch any incursion into Russian territory, only helicopters flying way below the radar horizon.
That it was possible to make an all in one plane for all branches of military for all purposes, and have verticals take off and landing for the Marines. And have some type of 360 degree futuristic digital heads-up display?
I did not bother with reading into all the details, I just know there have been article after article about the plane failing to reach expectation after expectation for basically my whole adult life now.
Not to mention that drones render human piloted jets much less necessary or useful.
>> Can you be more specific? What about the F35 was based on "fantasy physics"?
> That it was possible to make an all in one plane for all branches of military for all purposes, and have verticals take off and landing for the Marines.
That's not so much fantasy physics as it is fantasy product management.
IIRC, the major result of that was that the program cost way more to end up delivering three different planes that cost too much to fill the roles they were supposed to.
> And have some type of 360 degree futuristic digital heads-up display?
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.
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.
a huge portion of classified/sensitive material is not all that interesting/cutting edge. But if you'd rather an adversary not know it, or it could potentially be exploited then it'll be marked classified.
> WarThunder forum moderators quickly removed the post, adding “Materials related to the DTC10-125 are classified in China”.
Realistically speaking, what's the worst that could happen if they let the images stay? Unlike previous leaks which featured western military diagrams, I don't believe that there would be repercussions for disregarding Chinese law.
There's an interesting example of exactly this in missile development. Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain, and as a result had a more advanced design for a while.
Similar story with the Buran: they over-estimated the Space Shuttle's military capabilities on the assumption that the true intended mission profiles were being hushed up and ended up with a fully automated exoatmospheric nuclear bomber.
So it's a dodgy strategy if it's intentional: you've got to bet that your opponent will run out of cash before they can field the superweapons you've made them build; or that once built they won't be able to afford enough of them to make a difference.
The F-15 was way ahead of any other fighter jet for years because someone managed to convince whoever was paying that the MiG-25 was a super plane (it really wasn’t)
And the MiG-25 itself was designed because the USSR was spooked by the XB-70 Valkyrie which was a supersonic strategic bomber that flew higher and faster than any existing Soviet interceptor.
In case anyone is wondering, since it was a photo op flight, there's a photo of it shortly after the midair collision, missing a vert stabilizer. The fireball is the F-104 that contacted it.
Y'all seeing a pattern here? I don't think it's intentional but our fears drive us to escalate and pour money into things to counter things that don't really exist in the ways that we fear.
And, I just want to stress here, the BILLIONS we pour into these weapons systems are billions that we don't spend on building highways, schools, etc. You know, the actually useful stuff that benefits the average citizen.
The US is flanked by two friendly neighbors and separated from our nearest peer adversaries by thousands of miles of ocean. Neither China or Russia has any ability to project significant assets with a blue water navy. Yet we're still spending 700B+ / yr on defense? We could defend US soil with a tiny fraction of that. Our entire military-industrial complex is a pure grift the likes of which the world has never seen.
The US Department of Defense is there not to defend US soil, as you state, but rather to defend US interests. And US has plenty of interests (which have a meaningful effect on bulk of US citizens) that require action on the other side of the oceans - USA is getting quite a better deal in terms of international trade and the global flow of wealth than it would if it would be isolationist and just defend its soil.
> Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain
No. The K-13/AA-2 Atoll is a literal copy of an AIM-9 reverse-engineered from an example captured by the Chinese.
He is talking about the Vymple R-73 which was meant to counter the capabilities of a project that got cancelled, but they thought has become classified.
Yep. I can neither remember nor find my copy of Ron Westrum's China Lake book to check which feature it was, but it was one of helmet-mounted targeting or thrust vectoring. I think it was the latter but wouldn't put money on it.
Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
You want to make your opponent to vastly overestimate your power where you are in fact weak so they don't even try it and underestimate your clear advantages so if they get any funny ideas they'll get their ass kicked.
These leaks are usually just a photo of a page of the booklet all the soldiers get with their weapon systems. I had dozens of them, and they were not considered particularly sensitive (e.g. dont care if you lose them).
I know someone here in the UK who signed the official secrets act (terminology wrong but you get me) and it was made intimidatingly (I use that word precisely) clear to them that blabbing had bad consequences. I'm sure it's the same or worse elsewhere, so this all looks odd. Could it possibly be a somewhat plausible way to release helpful (mis)information? It just seems so odd otherwise.
Milsim flame wars can get pretty brutal, this happens semi-regularly and developers have to harshly police their forums for it. Public docs are frequently used as reference material for these arguments and every once in a while someone forgets OPSEC and publishes something that is open within the military but not approved for public release
Signing the official secrets act is a thing, you don't actually sign anything, at least for jobs I'm aware of (in the UK Civil Service), but your job is predicated on agreement to be bound by it's terms. In the act they call it notification, but you can be guilty of someone leaks to you and 'you should have known' not to disclose it.
Not really new info, "leak" verifies stats posted on PRC military programming on CCTV a couple years ago. Lots of PRC military content out there for open source intel to collect, but not many foreign analyst with language skills to bother.
Access to that particular material and that particular doc might allow the set of possibilities around a suspected spy to be reduced until there is only one person in it.
The information was previously available on the net and was accepted by consensus for most of the PLA watching community, but there was no really hard evidence.
Amusing, although the previous situations involving manuals and etc I think are hardly serious leaks considering how plentiful a service manual might be.
I gotta think once you hand out some classified material to X number of people, just as a policy you gotta assume the opposing folks know about it, even if just due to mishandling / human error.
Who cares? Governments classify just about anything and everything they legally can by default. It is a CYA move and there isn't a lot of thought put into it. If something needs to be public they figure they can always declassify it. The chances of any of this info actually mattering are miniscule.
I find it amusing a British publication is going out of its way to obscure Chinese military secrets by blurring the image. Exactly who do they think they're helping?
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)