Military Crewman leaks classified tank specifications on the War Thunder Forums - Again

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Classified Military documents have once again been leaked on the War Thunder forums, this time by a French Army Tank Crewman

 

Quotes

Quote

The War Thunder forums see many arguments about the accuracy or otherwise... This weekend saw one about the French Leclerc Main Battle Tank... which... got down to the exact speed of rotation of the tank's turret. Player __RED_CROSS__ got rather annoyed with... the turret's rotation speed..., among other things, and so decided to try and win the argument by—under the title 'Sekrit Document'—posting portions of the gunner manual for the Leclerc to prove their point. Quite pleased with their work, __RED_CROSS__ popped back into the thread several times during the day, saying things like "It took ~11 seconds for the turret to make a complete turn, so 550 mil/s (31°) is indeed correct not 40°." They further went on to clarify that they were in the Serie 2.3 model, while other fans in the thread reported the documents and argued over whether they were classified or not. After several hours the material was removed,... mod JagdEnte wrote: "Guys its not funnny [sic] 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!"  In June this year a player posted classified information about the Challenger 2 tank in order to win an argument about the size of the gap between the main turret structure and hull. On that occasion the UK Ministry of Defence ended up informing Gaijin... that the manual was in fact classified.

 

My thoughts

Wow, if I had a nickel for every time a member of the Military leaked classified documents to War Thunder, I'd have two nickels - which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Cunningham's law seems pretty accurate, even when it comes to classified specifications.

 

Sources

PC Gamer (quote source)

UK Defense Journal

 

[Spotty]

Thread locked. This topic is old and has already been poste-- Wait... It happened again!? Oh boy. At least it wasn't the same person as last time.

[Freakwise]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Thread locked. This topic is old and has already been poste-- Wait... It happened again!? Oh boy. At least it wasn't the same person as last time.

[lewdicrous]

14 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

decided to try and win the argument .... posting portions of the gunner manual for the Leclerc to prove their point.

All this to win some sort of argument on the internet?

How much are internet points worth?

[rcmaehl]

Just now, lewdicrous said:

All this to win some sort of argument on the internet?

How much are internet points worth?

At least 3

[lewdicrous]

Just now, rcmaehl said:

At least 3

More than 2.. I take my comments back.

[Gagz9k]

I was just remembering this debacle just yesterday. I mean, what the heck with tank fans. No one has ever think that this leaks come from people who work ALL day with real life tanks, and then goes on the computer during their off-work time and play SO MUCH of a tank game they notice little discrepancies with the real thing, and they go to the forums to discuss it?

 

I thought my work is cool, but apparently not Tanks-level of cool.

[Fasterthannothing]

2 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

All this to win some sort of argument on the internet?

How much are internet points worth?

You do know that internet points and follower counts are the new currency right?  Totally worth a few leaked military blueprints

 

Spoiler

/s

 

[lewdicrous]

Just now, SlidewaysZ said:

You do know that internet points and follower counts are the new currency right?  Totally worth a few leaked military blueprints

I must've missed the memo, apologies for my ignorance..

[Radium_Angel]

38 minutes ago, Gagz9k said:

I thought my work is cool, but apparently not Tanks-level of cool.

Tanking is serious business.

On one hand, I see their point, they are deeply invested in their tank of choice, and perhaps because they are actual tankers, and it ticks them off when a gaming company gets it wrong (for whatever reason...balance, lack of info, etc)

but on the other hand, they've gone too far with that sort of knowledge to try to prove a point.

 

I used to be deeply invested in WoT's German side, but the obvious bias toward the other side, and constant nerfing of the German tanks, forced me to stop playing.

It happens, no one gets everything right all the time.

[Ydfhlx]

Apparently this is the third time, as Eurocopter Tiger data has been leaked quite some time ago; everybody talks about that leak as first one on WT forums but I can't find a link unfortunately

[Falkentyne]

How is military stuff "Classified" when the military is CIVILIAN RUN to begin with?

Just post all the specs on wikipedia so we can make our own tanks, please.  Cars are so last century...

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

All this to win some sort of argument on the internet?

How much are internet points worth?

Zero. Sometimes it's even negative if you impact the safety or security of something.

 

Your average internet argument between two nobodies is worth nothing. When it's in a public forum that one other person can see and record it, now it's a problem.

 

Leaking top secret, classified, or otherwise privileged government information without clearance an lead directly to treason charges. Leaking confidential "trade secret" information about a privately owned or publicly owned corporation and their products and/or staff, at worst leads to a lawsuit. Leak the wrong information at the wrong time, and you might get other people killed.

 

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Zero. Sometimes it's even negative if you impact the safety or security of something.

 

Your average internet argument between two nobodies is worth nothing. When it's in a public forum that one other person can see and record it, now it's a problem.

 

Leaking top secret, classified, or otherwise privileged government information without clearance an lead directly to treason charges. Leaking confidential "trade secret" information about a privately owned or publicly owned corporation and their products and/or staff, at worst leads to a lawsuit. Leak the wrong information at the wrong time, and you might get other people killed.

Further to this, if any document is marked as a government secret in the UK and literally anybody leaks it, whether they're privvy to it or not and no matter the context of the leak, it is a crime. The official secrets act is very clear.

 

"Well I heard it from a friend who's sister is going out with someone who knows about it" is not a valid defence, if you made it public they're going to buttfuck you with a paper copy of the act.

 

99% sure the same would be true in the US too.

[InstantNewt]

I work in a similar industry. You basically have to resign yourself to knowing that there are a lot of people who will point to an incorrect Wikipedia article and refuse to change their stance because Wikipedia is the Bible to them. 
 

You have to not let it get under your skin. I’ve watched whole threads talk about capabilities of a product I work on while I was literally staring at the code and requirements database that said otherwise. Hell even within my own job I’ve had to call people out. One systems engineer was telling us a certain device was broken on the product, and my response was well yeah of course you think it’s broken, this product doesn’t have that device…
 

I get why they did it. But throwing your career and possible future away just to be right on the internet is pretty dumb. 

[poochyena]

4 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

All this to win some sort of argument on the internet?

Is there anything more important in life than that?

[HenrySalayne]

You can literally find a public demonstration of this tank doing a full rotation of the turret in 11 s. Nice job, keeping this information a secret!

 

[kuddlesworth9419]

I don't see the problem to be honest. They might be secret but I doubt countries that aren't meant to know these things didn't know already. And even if they didn't know they can estimate such things. Or just watch a public video of the tank doing a full 360 and time it. Not hard.

[akio123008]

While I agree personnel shouldn't share secret information, I don't think this matters much in this instance.

 

You don't seriously expect possible enemies didn't already know these specs do you?

 

Heck, they've probably got the CAD files for it.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

You can literally find a public demonstration of this tank doing a full rotation of the turret in 11 s. Nice job, keeping this information a secret!

 

The difference is that, with this video, all you know is that it can rotate in 11 seconds.

 

You don't know whether that's the maximum rotation speed or not. The specifications leaked from the manual would confirm this is the maximum, whereas a demonstration may not necessarily push the tank to it's limits specifically to avoid showing it's maximums publicly.

[NumLock21]

Can't believe the obsessiveness to accuracy some people have, to the point they will leak classified information, even when they can't even physically operate that tank. So did that person use a stop watch to time it. Upgrading his GPU to a RTX 3090Ti will help the tank's turret (don't know the proper name for it) do a complete turn in 10 seconds!

[ravenshrike]

6 hours ago, anodos said:

Espionage must be so easy nowadays. Just tell someone they're wrong and wait for them to whip out the classified info to prove you're an idiot.

All the players able to take advantage of the information already have it.

[DieJagdente]

7 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Summary

Classified Military documents have once again been leaked on the War Thunder forums, this time by a French Army Tank Crewman

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

Wow, if I had a nickel for every time a member of the Military leaked classified documents to War Thunder, I'd have two nickels - which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Cunningham's law seems pretty accurate, even when it comes to classified specifications.

 

Sources

PC Gamer (quote source)

UK Defense Journal

 

I didnt expect to land in LTT News nor in PCGamer article lol. To clarify the manualm did not only show rotation speed you could see more then meets the eye

[Heliian]

These people are way too hardcore.  

[Estiar]

3 hours ago, DieJagdente said:

I didnt expect to land in LTT News nor in PCGamer article lol. To clarify the manualm did not only show rotation speed you could see more then meets the eye

I haven't seen a primary source here before! Anyway, welcome to LTT forums. Leaking documents like that can definitely land someone in hot water. (that's an understatement) Hopefully they learned their lesson.