Hmmmm…as a former VF-32 Swordsman I never heard that quote…obviously coined by a Intruder pilot, frustrated that TopGun far out grossed Flight of the Intruder by an order of magnitude.
All I know is this, “Never as a pilot what type of plane they fly. If it’s a fighter, they will tell you. If not, why embarrass them.”…just say’n
Funny you bring that up, since that exact line was what cued the whole damn thing!
Read an interesting post on Hoggit about Chuck being unable/unwilling to make a F-14 guide due to the Man. Got me thinking, could Heatblur be in any hot water with the back to back world war champ?
Apparently creating training material for the F-14 is illegal, how will this module get around it?
Swedish Ikea modules will beam the information directly into your brain.
Chuck can speak for himself, but my interpretation of this is he’s avoiding a gray area within ITAR. A F-14 desktop simulator is clearly not going to allow Iran to achieve military dominance over the Persian Gulf any more than Top Gun, Fleet Defender, Jane’s Fighter Anthology, or the multitudes of FSX modules that came before it. If it were that serious, I can’t imagine the number of former crew members who contribute to these projects would be willing to do that.
However Chuck apparently does business with the US government in a sensitive capacity. Clearances are periodically audited, and the auditors are looking for potential security threats and very much operating on a basis of “what can I find to revoke this clearance” rather than “what lee-way can I give this person”. An innocuous manual for a flight sim could absolutely be misconstrued as illegal transfer of export controlled technology if your auditor is a big enough asshat. It’s a reasonable action on his part to avoid a potential sticking points in what is already a tense climate.
As for Heatblur? I could be wrong but I somehow doubt that a European software team with employees predominantly in Sweden and Poland, doing subcontractor work for a Russian subsidiary of a Anglo-Swiss holding company is pulling in a lot of US DoD or IC work, and have much broader leeway in how to operate with respect to those particular rules.
I’ve gotten a few visits from background investigators so I know how that goes.
“So you make training material for a Russian flight simulation program involving the F-14?”
Not exactly the connections you want made right now.
I think it’d probably depend on how high his clearance level is. For me, nobody would’ve batted an eye, given my job and what I did. Though if an investigator is worth a damn they’d not be concerned about that, but we’re talking about club fed here, so common sense need not apply.
Fortunately, with as many F-14 fanbois as we have, I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of guides for it.
There is a 5 year periodic review (PR) and yes, the investigators (used to be FBI and DIS; now contracted out) are looking for problems and issues. That’s their job.
The last step in the investigation, is the interview with the subject. At that point they are required to tell you if there are any problems. Once, after we had switched from the paper to a computer system, I had not listed all of my wife’s relatives in Norway and I had two credit cards that my ex-wife had taken out in my name with out my knowledge.
In that case, yes, the investigator was a bit accusatory on the issues but I kept my calm, and fixed both problems.
Then there was my PR while I was undergoing a divorce from my ex-wife who thought that as long as there were checks in the checkbook, there must be mooney in the bank…that interview took 2 days and I had to make a sworn written document detailing how I was utilizing USAA’s credit repair services and could account for every penny I paid out, i.e. that none had come from selling secrets. Not pleasant but I got through it.
So that’s their job. There job is not to be helpful. Being helpful is the sometimes job of the local Special Security Officer (SSO). One always checks with them first before doing anything that might be considered “out of bounds”. After checking with my SSO, I had to hold off working with the good people at FSWidgets (Australia based) until I had retired (wrote an extensive guide book for their QuickPlan app. Blatant Plug Warning: Power User Guide for QuickPlan )
Specifically to this case, it is not a technology transfer issue, it is a security issue.
Technically, one who holds a special compartmented information (SCI) clearance has to have written publications, run by their SSO first, (or face prosecution, jail time, and a fine). This of course doesn’t happen overnight. The SSO has to send it to a subject matter expert who will determine if the publication as a whole violates security or what specific parts violate security. Pull those parts, run it by them again, and that should be it.
The facts: We are talking about a 1970’s era aircraft that has been retired from the fleet for years now (Is Heatblur doing the D?) Further, while Chuck’s guides are nice, quick-and-dirty checklists, which I use frequently, they pertain to the sim model, not the real aircraft. No offense to Chuck, but they are fairly “dumbed-down” to get you quickly up, flying and shooting with the sim…not the real aircraft.
So it all boils down to what a “Chuck’s F-14 guide” would contain. If it is simple, focused on the basics, (see target on radar, lock up target, press fire missile when in range) and away from any ECM issues beyond “Press Chaff / Flare”, it would probably pass the SSO checks.
Regardless, nobody should take the above as my pushing or pressuring Chuck to write an F-14 guide. It is his clearance, his livelihood. If he is not comfortable, then that’s that. I’ve been there, know the feeling and took the side of caution…and I’m not in jail.
I think all of us will back Chuck no matter what decision he makes. 
Why is a sim guide for the F-14A/B more of a security concern than for the F/A-18C?
Iran. Same reason why most of the existing F-14’s that were at Davis-Monthan have been destroyed, and why spare parts stores have also been destroyed.
Take Iran out of the equation and nobody would care.
This is why the A-6 Intruder is the superior airframe.
You know, chuck could write the thing and then publish it anonymously, or under @komemiute’s name. Heck or mine. If the man is reading this forum, he should already have made me as a spy after that thread on COMINT and SIGINT 
Too much of a fine line to toe if your security clearance is at risk. My understanding is that this falls under ITAR, which the US gov’t takes very seriously. An F-14 guide, written just like the way Chuck writes them, showing up on this website and others in a tight knit community, that supposedly isn’t written by Chuck and by this other dude who doesn’t have a history of writing guides? Not only will they look at him for ITAR violations, but also lying about his involvement. The latter is a bigger deal than full disclosure, since it indicates dishonesty. Not fun stuff to go through.
And the man, or rather, the machine is already reading this forum. It’s just a question of whether or not somebody wants to go to the trouble of digging it up from the archives, should they want to nail anyone to the wall.
Yeah you are right. Well. We’ll just have to do it ourselves. If nobody will, I will take a chuck’s guide on one screen and use it as a template to write one for the tomcat. I will take forever doing it. But I’m willing to do it.
I think there’s more than enough people with an interest in the F-14 to write a guide on it; some may already be doing it now. @near_blind is probably the perfect candidate.
To elaborate on @Navynuke99, the US Navy is still pissed that a collection of it’s most capable Gen 4 fighters fell into the hands of a hostile power, and is doing everything it can to make sure they are as combat ineffective as can be without actually shooting them down.
If I had to guess these specific restrictions went on the books in the 80s when the difference between a US F-14 and an IRIAF F-14 was less dramatic (though still significant). They’ve persisted out of habit after the Navy retirement of the F-14, and they’ll probably persist until twenty years after every last Iranian F-14 is confirmed destroyed.
If Chuck isn’t comfortable creating a guide for the Tomcat, I’m absolutely fine with that. It’s his wish and I want to respect that. Done deal.
I am curious what the Iranians could possibly glean from a Chuck’s guide, as good as they are, that they haven’t already gotten in the documentation previously provided by Gruman and/or learned through their decades of flying and supporting the aircraft, including the war with Iraq? And once the DCS Tomcat is released in the wild, would the guide not be just be an interpretation of the publically available sim?
Perhaps it’s just meeting the letter of the law regardless of it’s applicable interpretation.
Coughs uncomfortably in upcoming periodic review
Nothing. Without going to far into it, this is a case of bureaucratic inertia. The government wanted to prevent Iran from getting its hands on any information about the AWG-9 or AIM-54, as a prosecutor you cast the broadest net for the most leeway in how you pursue offenders.
I’ll quote myself:
Veering into politics, but I’ll give an example: Manning got nailed for stealing and sharing classified info, but you don’t hear anything about the people who failed to implement the policies to keep that from happening. Thus, the system tends to focus on why Manning did what he did and not why the people responsible for the classified system were failing to implement measures directed by policy. The system is geared up to punish everybody, not the responsible culprit. I know of many gross violations of security policy that are allowed (and remain!) simply because someone’s ego is involved and too many people don’t want to put the effort into doing things right.
Chuck’s case is unique and while he’d probably be in the clear for the most part, I can understand why it carries a special circumstance of risk for him – more than usual.
I’ll throw my own hat into the ring and write a similar guide for the F-14 if nobody else wants to do it, but given the F-14’s popularity, I’m sure within a day of release there will be several good guides out there, including the one that Heatblur will inevitably include with the release.
You all realize that Aerosoft produced no less than seven (7) manual volumes for their F-14. True, a German company. Still, some pretty detailed info abut the radar and weapons systems.
Absolutely. Which is why, one should speak to his security folks and get their OK before such an undertaking.
Ummm…sort of but not quite. You may not hear about it because negligence is not necessary a crime under the UCMJ. Failing to implement/enforce policy and procedures would likely fall under administrative disciplinary measures–Letters of Caution to Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP), which can be covered by the Privacy Act. All are career ending measures.
That said, the entire DOD was required to do an intense classified systems “house cleaning”, and fully document it. CDs were banned (that how Manning got his stuff out). Exceptions had to be specific, requested and approved in writing with stringent security procedures attached. I was in charge of 500+ folks at the time and scores of computer systems. It was painful, especially for us folks who were following the rules to begin with. Still, that type of thing doesn’t get any press.
Wasn’t that also the driving factor for banning flash drives? THAT was a fun day to come into work.