[HN Gopher] US Army Publishing Directorate - Technical Manuals
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       US Army Publishing Directorate - Technical Manuals
        
       Author : belter
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2022-10-10 10:30 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (armypubs.army.mil)
 (TXT) w3m dump (armypubs.army.mil)
        
       | tommyderami wrote:
       | The Army has plenty of problems you see in other large
       | organizations related to bureaucracy, strategic initiatives,
       | retention etc, but one thing I think they do very well is their
       | documentation. It is generally organized into four(ish)
       | categories of Army Doctrine Pubs (ADPs) which are summaries of
       | first principals for the major domains the Army operates in,
       | followed by Army Technique Pubs which cover mid-level techniques
       | and descriptive frameworks for various types of work. Field
       | Manuals (FMs) contain more prescriptive information and tasks for
       | both small and large units, and finally Technical Manuals which
       | are basically instruction manuals for specific pieces of
       | equipment or specific tasks.
       | 
       | I think it's debatable given the pace of change in most
       | technology organizations whether it's even desirable to codify
       | the standard tasks and competencies expected from different
       | classes of information workers (ie. SRE1 vs Data Systems Analyst)
       | but having at least ADP level documents that allow employees to
       | align their efforts with company strategic aims is a good idea
       | and having some sort of reference documents for involved
       | technical tasks probably makes sense when the work is not able to
       | be automated.
        
       | TMWNN wrote:
       | What a span of time! _KITCHEN EQUIPMENT; REPAIRS AND UTILITIES_
       | was published in 1946, and a document on UPS selection
       | /installation/maintenance was published in 2007.
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | Having worked on a military base, I can confirm that the
         | kitchens have not been repaired since 1946.
        
       | linuxlizard wrote:
       | I am puzzled why there are only 141 documents. There should be
       | thousands. The US Army has been around a long time and
       | bureaucracy begets documentation.
        
         | rascul wrote:
         | This is only a subset, apparently only those TM's in the 5
         | series. Explore the Publications dropdown to find thousands
         | more Technical Manuals and other publications.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | These appear to all be from the Corps of Engineers. The menu
         | pulldown shows entries like "TM - Technical Manuals (Range
         | 1-8)" that have thousands of entries each. One example:
         | https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/TM_1_8.aspx
        
       | billfruit wrote:
       | How do we see the actual documents themselves? Clicking on the
       | link only seems to open a docket which has info about the
       | document, by not the document itself.
        
         | lreeves wrote:
         | Yeah only some of them seem to be actually viewable, for
         | example [1] has a link to the PDF but most seem to not have
         | this.
         | 
         | 1 -
         | https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/Details.aspx?P...
        
       | filbo wrote:
       | Anyone got a shortlist of the ones applicable to this audience?
        
         | graderjs wrote:
         | From looking at the list of 141 entries, everything from
         | 
         | TM 5-852-1 ARCTIC AND SUBARCTIC CONSTRUCTION - GENERAL
         | PROVISIONS {AFR 88-19, VOL 1}
         | 
         | onwards looks pretty interesting, as it covers:
         | 
         | - building stuff in arctic
         | 
         | - building stuff to resist nukes
         | 
         | - "security engineering" including electronics
         | 
         | But interestingly enough, I can't figure out how to get PDFs.
        
           | gexla wrote:
           | > But interestingly enough, I can't figure out how to get
           | PDFs.
           | 
           | Click on the links for each item in the first column. On the
           | details page, you'll get a pdf link.
        
             | graderjs wrote:
             | Connecting from Taiwan I don't actually get a PDF link on
             | the details page.
             | 
             |  _edit: I see it 's maybe not a Taiwan thing (tho some DoD
             | sites are inaccessible from here), some of the other
             | publications sections do have PDF links, just none of the
             | details pages on the TM page in the OP link._
        
             | mrWiz wrote:
             | Thanks! Not every directorate has a PDF attached, and given
             | that the first few I tried didn't have them I assumed that
             | none of them had PDFs.
        
         | belter wrote:
         | You want to go higher on the menu hierarchy and explore from
         | "Home" -> "Publications"
         | 
         | I find some of the "Field Manuals" interesting. Some of them
         | have sections on OSINT
         | 
         | https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/FM.aspx
        
         | ravenstine wrote:
         | See this comment I made in another post:
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33017733#33020509
         | 
         | It's by no means an exhaustive list, but those are some good
         | ones to have. Like I said there, I particularly appreciate the
         | literature on radio.
        
         | twosheep wrote:
         | I doubt you'd see anything exciting that's approved for public
         | release
        
           | KineticLensman wrote:
           | The US often operates as part of a coalition and it is
           | desirable for coalition partners to be able to understand how
           | to cooperate with US army units. If you encrypt docs that you
           | want to share with partners, then you have to share your
           | encryption mechanism, which may be much more problematic.
           | 
           | Also, these sorts of docs contain general procedures, not the
           | actual plans of a specific operation.
        
             | aerostable_slug wrote:
             | Some of these docs are literally how to frame a house. Or
             | set up the plumbing for a communal latrine. Much of it is
             | not sensitive.
        
           | abudabi123 wrote:
           | The US Navy docs are held back probably because they won ww2.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-10-10 23:02 UTC)