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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

“Guys its not funnny to leak classified Documents of modern equipment you put the lives of many on stake who work daily with the Vehicles! Keep in Mind that those documents will be deleted immediately alongside sanctions. Thanks for reading!”

I always think it is amazing how many buy into the lifes at risk hyperbole. Even if we assume that the content in the document isn't already known to all the "players" in the field, how much "advantage" can be gained from the manual (I suspect if it really was that important they would not put it in the manual). Moreover, if leaking the manual really puts the lifes of the crew at risk, would not leaking also put lifes at risk, i.e. the one of the people fighting the tanks?

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"Moreover, if leaking the manual really puts the lifes of the crew at risk, would not leaking also put lifes at risk, i.e. the one of the people fighting the tanks?"

Thats the point. No military is interested in making it easier for its enemies to fight you.

And with irregular conflicts, you cannot assume everyone knows everything anyway. If you would have to fight this tank for real, don't you think, you want any information possible? Weak spots, sensors,.. or even getting enough knowledge to take over the tank. Military secrets have their reason, no matter how you judge the stance of said military.

>No military is interested in making it easier for its enemies to fight you.

Is this game made by the military?

I could be wrong but I don’t think Gaijin was created or contracted by the military to make the game.

I dunno, in effect it's military propaganda. I know the game America's Army was funded and promoted by the US army at the time.

I think there is probably a genuine desire for people to play a realistic game w here you're in large, heavily armoured weapons of war. The game in question has tanks from almost every nation that has ever produced tanks, so I'd wager it's either a consequence of propaganda rather than propaganda for military per se.

I think it's the other way around : due to past propaganda, Russians really like tanks. As a result, tank games come from Russia.

> Military secrets have their reason...

These reasons are only tangential to the public good, which is better served by transparency and democracy.

I believe it would be better for an army to put its manuals on the internet publicly so its soldier could read them easely than to have them semi-secret. What good does reading a tank manual do the enemy?

"Oh, the armor is weak in the back?"

I have seen the same problem in companies, where manuals and reports are hardly accessible and thus effectively lost in the name of confidentiality ...

I have a hard time imagining that any nation state that operates its own tanks, wouldn't have a thick dossier about each tank type that a potential adversary might field.

So these leaks in all likelyhood are not militarially damaging in anyway, but may weaken public perspective of the military (incompetent with keeping 'vital' information safe for instance).

I see no particular reason though to openly share these documents from first sources either. Security through obscurity is bad security on its own, but can be an extra layer when combined with other tactics.

> What good does reading a tank manual do the enemy?

"Oh, we can recreate this, only better or more of them"

"Oh, this missile uses IR, we can come up with a counter"

"Oh, this device uses such and such chip, our hackers know an exploit for that one"

Come on, use some imagination.

I think any competent nation is able to obtain this type of information - but it will require doing some work. I feel the point is, why give the other parties information for free, where we could easily make them burn money to get it?

I'm thinking back to the Cold War - one way of seeing the rivalry between the US and USSR is as a game of making the other side spend more and more money, in hopes the enemy's economy will give out and collapse before yours does.

Excluding the IR that info would not be in the operators manual. Also, capabilities such as type of missile systems on the tank are in practice not secret and present in 3rd party catalogues.

The only real downside I can see of public manuals are the risk for adhoc use of captured equipement. However I believe the upside of having the operators being able to use the equipment properly easier is greater.

The known vulnerabilities of a tank (e.g. X% will be defeated by weapon Y in situation Z) will usually be classified higher than the operator manual (which however may contain technical or tactical work-arounds). E.g. the existence of a defensive aid suite on a tank system may be unclassified (because it is plainly visible in photographs), what it does may be restricted, how it does it may be secret and how well it does it may be top secret.

Every tank crewman gets a copy of the TM for their vehicles, at least in the US Army. I doubt this is actually classified, unless for some reason the UK is vastly different. You can at least view the entry for the M1A2 TM for the US Army here: https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/Details.aspx?P...

You can't actually view it on the Internet, because as it notes, it has a dissemination restriction to US government agencies and contractors only, but it is unclassified and the soldiers on the crew are employees of a US government agency and entitled to read these. Reading paper is fine. In fact, when you're actually on a tank, it's your only option. You're not usually going to have a ruggedized computer that can access the Internet with you, if there's even a network at all serving wherever you happen to be. Information needs to be available in the absence of connectivity.

If the army is relying on security through obscurity for a device that hundreds if not thousands of people will be using /maintaining and thus have access to this document then the only people putting lives at risk are the army imo.

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