Can one of you guys do me a solid and mail this to me?
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Unfortunately, not the way this stuff works. In particular, ITAR is very broad and applies primarily to war/defense/military materials sent outside of the USA. It doesnāt matter if itās on eBay or digitized on the net, because itās still considered restricted. Itās sort of like just because classified materials are leaked, it doesnāt suddenly make the material unclassified.
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Just looking on f-16.net and a Moscow based (location) poster has posted a cover of a 2015 F-22A dash 34 with someone else putting a link to the sale of one in 2018 and not bad at $275. I say that because the Modern Viper Guide first edition was going on Amazon for up to $1000 used (until the 2nd edition was recently released!!)
So no idea if was him selling that but it looks like at least one of the 2 x TOs listed in the violations were going on ebay at some point.
F22 manuals are pretty easy to find. Here is a PDF version.
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It has features one can only dream of in modern sims
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Uh, oh.
Guys, thatās a little too realistic.
EDIT: If the US citizen cooperating with this fellow is indeed from Texas, I bet I know exactly where those manuals came from, most likely, a retired General Dynamics/Lockeed-Martin employee working at the facility in Fort Worth. That was the epicenter of F-16 manufacture and some of those guys kept some interestingā¦souvenirs.
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I had the boxed version and actually on the back said :āIf it was any more realistic weād have to arrest you.ā
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Yes and really that is where the blame lies because once its on the public net the horse has bolted and is on a ferry to Moscow and someone in the US has clearly let them loose.
Because of the way this was done publicly (blatantly) kinda puts doubt on the intent because anyone that knew what they were doing wouldnāt be stupid enough to leave all the evidence on the net in writing.
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I remember few older games with similar adverts. I guess we reached times where it became a reality ā¦
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True dat.
Hmmmmmmmm. Nah. Not to me weāre not.
I remember playing that on the Mega Drive with my brother when I was young and the part we found most difficult was mid air refuelling, until we realised that the planes always start off lined up correctly so you only had to blip the throttle for half a second or so and not touch the d-pad and all would be fine.
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Some press about the timing.
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The screenshot releases seemedā¦oddā¦given the news. I can see both sides of it. Showing that the product development continues and the news story has nothing to do with ED. But I can also see those who might think it somewhat thumbing their nose at the story too. I canāt decide which it is to be honest.
I think the intellectual me understands that nothing was probably gained by the freelancing guy that wasnāt working in that capacity for ED. So in that regard Iām happy that the F-16 for DCS appears so far along. But the skeptical me wonders. And the tough part is, ED probably canāt really comment beyond legalize so I doubt any clarity will be gained.
Verdict though? Iāll buy the F-16 the day it is available. And I hope that whatever lessons are learned (by whomever) are appropriate, non politicized, and that true intent is found somewhere under it all.
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Could not have said it better. But I am not split. To me it smacks of taunting. Or said more softly, intentionally ill-timed. I have no interest in the machine because I feel that I got to know her well enough in BMS.
Weāll just have to leave it in the capable hands of a certain former intelligence analyst 
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Whats the difference between having one of those manuals and the NATOPS for the hornet? There is links on this website to PDF versions of it. I mean you can literally put it in google and find several different websites that have it posted freely.
I donāt know why it has to be sinister. You really think that they moved up the early access just to taunt someone? Isnāt it simpler to consider that if ED were thinking of a autumn early access that this isnāt the right time to announce it? Following the same pattern as the -18? Like maybe they had it already planned and then this all became public? And maybe, doing anything related to the -16 was going be a case of ābad opticsā no matter what they chose?
I feel for the guy because, face it, i am interested combat flight sims and having the real docs would be pretty cool and i could see myself in those shoes. Granted i would not be crazy enough to think that -22 or -35 aircraft docs should be in my possession, nor would i even remotely consider selling them.
Maybe this is all a case of cosmic bad timing and we can leave intent out of it? I mean i am not sure why we are even having this discussion.
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Well, if weāre feeling like tucking in to some Cynical Stew, my mouthful would be that the DCS Shop Pre-order release date for the last major module most of us bought would be Persian Gulf on May 18th 2018. That means our Bonus Points 1 year expire for the pre-order of the DCS F-16C May 22nd by just about the right margin. In fact, if we go by āRelease Wednesdayā it is basically the earliest you can release the pre-orders without lots of existing people having $26 bonus points sitting around. 
(actually, probably the points donāt count, they seem to have lots of caveats about actual use, to the extent I think they are reworking them all?)
I think that without any more info (that weāre never going to get as said above), it sort of does make sense that the Falcon would be a lot easier/quicker to develop to a pre-order state as the ā2nd projectā when so much of the team has done stuff recently on the Hornet.
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@Fridge, why announce it now? Why this week? Why go from the very reasoned response by ED from just a few days ago to posting screenshots of the very same machine? Thereās no hurry. The thing comes out in the Fall. Wait until June to open the curtain. Does doing it this week really make a difference? The situation was big enough for someone to get arrested and ED, though almost certainly blameless, would have better served his cause and theirs by exercising a week or two of radio silence.