Model Forum / General / Models / October 2007

However, the specific ground for refusal related to defense articles.
The benefit a foreign power might get as a result of the release of the
drawings is not itself a consideration, and the defense article
restriction should not be used in relation to something that isn't one.

If the US government feels that certain information should not be
released because it could be used by a foreign power in a way that was
militarily significant, then it should enact a ground for the purpose,
if the legislature will let it, not bend another ground beyond breaking
point.

Sylvia.

Like doing a "Grand Tour" mission to the outer planets for example.
Unfortunately the planets aren't going to line up that way for a century
or two to allow someone to try that again via gravity assist, and by
then even Tahiti is going have the ability to do it.
I assume the big problem is the RTGs on Voyager. Unfortunately, the
Soviets used those on their remote weather sensing stations along their
polar shores, but between the time USSR fell and modern Russia emerged a
few years later... and they got around to checking up on them
again...most of those RTGs had mysteriously vanished somehow.

One thing you will find out by studying the history of espionage over
the past 200 years is that everyone was infiltrated by everyone else to
a degree that they never even suspected in their most horrible
nightmares - to the point where the US could decode Japanese diplomatic
intercepts pre-WW II faster than their own diplomats could, and the
Soviets were hard pressed to get the stuff they received from their
1940's-1950's spies in the US atomic weapons program translated into
Russian at the rate they were receiving it on a day-to-day basis.
There were two brilliant ideas for countering this; the first was used
by Kelly Johnson of the Lockheed "Skunk Works" when the they were
designing the F-117:
A.) There are around fifty people involved in this whole program who
actually know why the F-117 looks like that...by the time it got to the
production floor, the people who actually built it knew exactly how to
make those particular angles on it to those particular tolerances, but
had no idea why that was important, because we burned all the papers
concerning that before we put into production.
Or:
B.) The B-2 generated around 10,000 pages of paperwork per day from the
start of the program, and topped out at around 100,000 pages per day
when it hit full speed...which means if none of that paperwork was
classified "Top Secret", anyone  trying to figure on what we were up to
would have been like someone looking for a diamond in a coal deposit,
because around 99.99% of it was completely worthless from espionage
purposes, and they'd never know what was important or not.
Luckily, we were smart enough to mark select parts of it "Top Secret" so
that Soviet spies would know where to find the good stuff.
This was highly successful in keeping the aircraft's design concepts
secret, as they had a pretty much identical design ready to go by the
time ours entered service, except that their intake and exhaust design
looked smoother than ours. :-D

Pat

But it seems to me the term "state of the art" refers more to
technology infrastructure than simple vehicle drawings.

Many times the services, especially the Army, owns the drawings to
weapons systems it buys.  Then, it can give them to another company
when the system comes up for replacement orders, and someone can
underbid the original developer.  But that frequently brings up
problems. Even with US companies, there are lots of processes that are
not included in "drawings", and the new company finds it very hard to
really produce weapons at cheaper prices, because they have to develop
the processes within their own company now.  And, frequently the first
lots from the new manufacturer have a LOT  of qc bugs.

I think the same thing is true between companies.  The real secrets
are not in the outlines of parts on the drawings.  Most countries have
machine shops and machinists who can make parts to prints.  Yeah, they
could make a Cessna  172 with factory drawings.  But items that
require fancy metallurgy, composite parts, chem milling, fancy
electronics, etc. are likely not to be easily produced.

Selling plans to a weapons system is not the problem- selling the
process technology is what is the problem.

you can get just as dead from a club as a m16.

As long as they never get the secrets of how the Browning .50 caliber
machine gun is made, we're all safe.
That, and the Norden bombsight. :-)

Pat

What country was that in?  Certainly not the United States, where only
government officials have what is called 'original classification
authority'.  It is certainly never "up to the scientists and engineers
to define what would be classified".

Again, not how it works.  Folks with original classification authority
produce a Classification Guide, but it's not 'guidelines'.  It
mandates what is and is not classified.  Every case where it is "up to
the scientists and engineers to define what would be classified" is a
case of what is called 'derivative classification' and traces back to
that program classification guide.

See Executive Order 12958 (April 17, 1995) for latest guidance on this
subject.

Simply wrong.  We need to (and do) do both.

I find that pretty unlikely, particularly to Australia.  Got a cite
for that?

Why didn't he just buy it somewhere else?

Considering the lethality of the stuff, I'm surprised a civilian could
ever get it at all.

Pat

I'd think we would _want_ or enemies to copy Galileo's antenna design. ;-)

Oh yes, that mess... well they just wanted to see how it worked, that
was all. Okay, so maybe it got a little bent or something when they were
looking at it....but they won't ever do that again, they promise. :-P

Pat