Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#51

Post by chitowneats » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 11:59 PM UTC

kindle-dev wrote: post #49

chitowneats wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you watch the video? Someone is clearly recording this object intentionally. The camera pans and zooms to follow the truck. Whether this is secretly being sent to China via TikTok is somewhat irrelevant if an individual is breaking protocol by intentionally taking video on their smartphone.

I was responding to the comment asking why TikTok should be banned vs. other social media.

Yes. I was agreeing with the parent comment that the social media platform is irrelevant. Presumably, video taken of secret military hardware is not ok in any circumstance. It's the smartphone, the attached camera, and the individual that is at fault.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#52

Post by trenning » Tue, Sep 28, 2021, 11:59 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #17

An OPSEC violation has once again made a case for why using TikTok should be a punishable offense in the military, It's not clear why TikTok is singled out here, this could just has easily been posted to Facebook or Instagram or one of the other myriad of social media platforms, or pushed automatically to someone's open photo album in the cloud. If OPSEC is important, don't let people bring their personal camera phon…

There's also no indication from this article that the video came from a service member. You can hear other heavy equipment vehicles in the background and the truck driver is definitely not driving anything owned by the military so also likely a contractor. Angry old man FB vibes from that article

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#53

Post by imwillofficial » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:00 AM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #8

The open source arms control people over at arms control wonk[1] regularly talk about using Russian social media as a place to learn about base layout, details, etc. It's very hard to check that every person within vision range isn't going to snap a photo. [1] https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

The assumption is constant training and hearty penalties would dissuade one from such leaks, however, here we are. I wonder what other mechanisms could be used to stop actions like this?

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#54

Post by colordrops » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:00 AM UTC

desertraven wrote: post #18

Could this be an intentional leak? Put some super stealth looking object on a truck to mislead adversaries?

This was my first thought. It's very unlikely that this was unintentional if it is indeed a leak.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#55

Post by imwillofficial » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC

jcun4128 wrote: post #35

s1artibartfast wrote: post #6

Looks like an X-47 to me. On a side note, somebody just got fired. https://www.rumblerum.com/northrop-grumman-x-47b-uav/

The UCAV from Stealth

Hopefully the AI in this one behaves better

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#56

Post by Maursault » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

le-mark wrote: post #36

dogma1138 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the video it’s definitely not an X-47 it also has a cockpit bulge (the model is upside down for RCS testing).

It definitely has some interesting bulges and the flap at the bottom looks like an odd shape for a landing gear. My guess would be scram jet. What’s more interesting to me is the propulsion. Nuclear salt water rocket seems totally within the realm of current or near current technology. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket

See link skunkworker's post above. It is probably not a working vehicle, but a test shape. Also, it is probably upside down, and what you think is odd landing gear is just a stand for the shape.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#57

Post by newsclues » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

So much censorship on the internet but the government can’t keep top secret projects from leaking?

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#58

Post by kyleblarson » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

I'm sure it's just because I'm too old to be in the target demographic but 9 times out of 10 when I see a Tik Tok video online (I don't have an account) the level of narcissism and lack of decorum on display is sickening.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#59

Post by IronWolve » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

Reminds me of the cartoon of Robin checking in at the secret batcave.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/481499210580508672/QL3y...

I remember when this issue came out on social media, we even had military checking in at bases all over, now its gps on fitbit exposing peoples locations on social media.

Re: Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

#60

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #46

Johnny555 wrote: post #17

An OPSEC violation has once again made a case for why using TikTok should be a punishable offense in the military, It's not clear why TikTok is singled out here, this could just has easily been posted to Facebook or Instagram or one of the other myriad of social media platforms, or pushed automatically to someone's open photo album in the cloud. If OPSEC is important, don't let people bring their personal camera phon…

>It's not clear why TikTok is singled out here, this could just has easily been posted to Facebook or Instagram or one of the other myriad of social media platforms, or pushed automatically to someone's open photo album in the cloud. There's an additional layer here that's often ignored: that specific piece of information that leaked is the same regardless of what platform it was released on, but if it was released o…

[deleted]