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Just because it's classified doesn't mean it's valuable. Lots of stuff is classified for bureaucratic reasons. Also, there's little about the Challenger 2 that
by greedo 5y ago
Just because it's classified doesn't mean it's valuable. Lots of stuff is classified for bureaucratic reasons. Also, there's little about the Challenger 2 that opposing forces couldn't have researched. The tank itself has been around for more than 2 decades, and the Soviets/Russians have been consistently able to penetrate British security for the last 70 years.
The gun is nothing special, and it's performance is well known. Chobbham/Dorcester armor has been around for quite awhile, and isn't unique. The US has sold M1s to Egypt, Iraq etc with Chobbham armor.
- jandrewrogers 5y agoFWIW, the armor on the export M1 is different than the US version.
- greedo 5y agoYes, but all M1s have Chobbham/Dorcester armor. Some additionally have DU (Depleted Uranium) inserts. The DU inserts are generally limited to US Army M1s.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- duxup 5y agoI remember growing up watching the "military vehicle shows" on the Discovery channel when they just output all the various specs of every vehicle. I think a lot of the general operating specs and such are pretty well known.
- walshemj 5y agoUp to a point I recall some one who worked for RAE and was on Salisbury plain and their land rover was over taken at speed by a MBT (well over the listed spec BTW)
- bserge 5y agoTbf, anything can overtake those garage decorations.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoI was a huge fan of these sorts of shows as well! Having talked with folks who had full access to the specs however, my understanding is that there are specs and there are specs. Basically the specs that give advantage or could be exploited as weaknesses on the battlefield were classified whereas the kind of stuff you could deduce just by watching one operate in the field was not. So for example, seeing how far a tank could shoot by watching one compete, not classified. But 'how many' shootable things and 'what kind' it carries might be classified.
- dylan604 5y agoThere's also things like published max speeds, and then full military power speeds that are more closely held.
- angry_octet 5y agoMore likely, that operating it at the official full speed causes irreparable damage within an hour, and it's traditional for everyone to piss on the radiator to help cool it down. How maintainable they are in the field and whether the Army has enough trained mechanics are more important than sexy specs like muzzle velocity and max speed.
- dylan604 5y agoRight, but when bullets are flying and it's time to high tail it out of Dodge, then pissing on the radiator doesn't seem such a high price.
- adolph 5y agoChobham armour is the informal name of a composite armour developed in the 1960s at the British tank research centre on Chobham Common, Surrey. The name has since become the common generic term for composite ceramic vehicle armour. Other names informally given to Chobham armour include "Burlington" and "Dorchester." "Special armour" is a broader informal term referring to any armour arrangement comprising "sandwich" reactive plates, including Chobham armour. Although the construction details of the Chobham armour remain a secret, it has been described as being composed of ceramic tiles encased within a metal framework and bonded to a backing plate and several elastic layers. Owing to the extreme hardness of the ceramics used, they offer superior resistance against shaped charges such as high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds and they shatter kinetic energy penetrators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour
- josh2600 5y agoIt sounds like it's basically chainmail for tanks.
- idiotsecant 5y agoit sounds like it's basically unlike chainmail in all possible ways!
- virtue3 5y agoI believe you were thinking of brigandine.
- greedo 5y agoActually, there are no ceramics in Chobham armor. https://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.com/2016/03/chobham-armor-facts-and-fiction-1.html https://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.com/2016/03/chobham-a...
- Groxx 5y agoWhile an interesting read: it's fairly clearly stated that they believe there were no ceramics in early Chobham armors. And some newer ones might, though probably not most, and that it's not particularly relevant to the effectiveness (i.e. it's an armor structural pattern, ceramic is orthogonal). So it mostly supports your claim, since Wikipedia is rather focused on the ceramic aspect, but it's in a somewhat different context.
- beowulfey 5y agoJust because it isn’t valuable doesn’t mean it is legally allowed to be released.
- pyronik19 5y agoI think this is understood. The issue is that these bureaucratic legalese nonsense needs to go.
- jvanderbot 5y agoThis community well understands how individually innocuous details can be aggregated to produce very important insights. The governments and intelligence agencies of the world know this too. Perhaps one could learn of a manufacturing deficiency / lack of understanding by getting enough details about enough vehicles the UK uses. Etc etc.
- mywittyname 5y agoJust because its illegal doesn't mean that there was any harm done.
- ozim 5y agoThat is a bit more complex issue. Well if the guy was a commander he should be smart enough not to share/discuss such things in gamer forums. While yes technology on its own could be mostly understood by people you still expect commander even if not officer to keep his mouth shut. Person did harm to himself while maybe not to the army. Just for being silly and not careful while you are being in the army there should be prosecution. Now compare it with how much work goes into telling people that they should not click links in suspicious emails... People still click those links, companies get ransomed. At some point it is not "ALL FUN AND GAMES" but "WE ARE RESPONSIBLE ADULTS" - well no one died but I would not like to work with that guy on serious things. Commanding a tank is a serious thing not "well no harm done, corporate bs".
- analognoise 5y agoIt doesn't matter if a technical person looking at it thinks it isn't valuable. If it has any marking other than "Approved for public release", the book will be thrown at someone intentionally releasing it - and rightly so. If the MOD says it is classified, this person likely just ended their career and might go to jail. For a tank game's accuracy. I mean sometimes people make bad choices, but Jesus, what a mistake.
- ManBlanket 5y agoSeems like this is only news for two reasons: 1. tanks are interesting. 2. people get excited about cancelling strangers on the internet over whatever loose pretext they can. How else can you explain this profoundly mundane story ending up on the front page of a tech news site? What's next, we going to start chiming in on soldiers who don't renew their military IDs in time? Y'all are acting like he leaked plans for the Army's top-secret death ray, or a bunch of videos of helicopters killing civilians, not a boring piece of paper work nobody in the military cared about enough to declassify after decades of service.
- joe-collins 5y agoMany people on this website work with governments. National security topics intersect with technology often: Snowden, Reality Winner, the OPM hack, SolarWinds, really anything involving the NSA. There's hardly a day we don't read about some state-backed threat actor. Does it not seem reasonable, then, that a violation of fundamental classification policy catches interest? The impact of the leak shouldn't be measured in the material revelations that might be in those documents, especially should they be so underwhelming as many seem to think. Rather, the impact is that a person of rank chose to execute such a violation for such an overwhelmingly trivial reason. Imagine, if you can, the impact that act might have on morale within that military, and on the capacity for the social pressures within that organization to maintain adherence in the future.
- krisoft 5y agoI don’t know what is news and what isn’t. But I know why I find it interesting. There is a very human element in it. I can totally imagine what goes on in the leakers head: He really knows that tank. He worked with it since forever. And the game developers are wrong. They got some detail wrong. And not just any detail, but an important… no, not just important but a crucial detail! He can tell them, but they wont believe him. Why would they? He could be anybody. So he puts his credentials in his forum profile. But the developers might still be ignoring him. This might happen for a myriad reasons, but he decides it is because they don’t believe him still. Those fools! How could he show them? Ah, he will just upload this manual, that should prove he is right and the developers will be forced to accept defeat! Super silly, but you can just see how one can walk themselves into this situation. One can also imagine it from the developers side. They are probably at least a little bit interested in tanks and weaponry. At least some of them. It is possible that they even have aspirations to make a very realistic tank simulator. Some obnoxious loudmouth user drops a leak on them. Publicly! They can’t use this info now or their game might get banned for “national security” reasons. They can’t even let it be ambigous if they have used it or not. If they get banned in the west their business might as well shut down the next day. They have to distance themselves publicly and dramatically. ( Now of course this might not be how it went down. I can imagine many variants. But it is a sticky situation none-the-less.) The third interesting bit here is the question of what makes a good game. Is a change which makes the tank simulator more realistic also always makes it more fun? Are there also game ballance considerations? Or maybe some detail would barelly change the player experience but would require a complete rewrite of their simulation engine. Is it worth implementing still? These are the perspectives and questions which made this article interesting to me. I don’t even know what “canceling strangers” would even mean in this situation.
- bronzeage 5y agoThe U.S has many adversaries, not only nation states but terrorist organizations like ISIL. Just because the most advanced adversaries probably have access to something doesn't mean that you shouldn't protect it from the weaker adversaries. If anything, most of the U.S. engagement nowadays are against inferior enemies, not Russia, and against them, even small things like these can be useful to the enemy, especially an enemy with really shallow intelligence gathering.
- walshemj 5y ago"Customer" Tanks don't get all the sweet latest tech that the host country has. an Iraqi T72 wasn't the same as the WP ones for example.
- weare138 5y agoChobham armor is just an informal/generic name for composite armor. The actual designs vary from tank to tank and are highly classified. There's no singular style of 'Chobham armor'.