The article mentions several aircraft. I have the entire A-10C manual printed out and in several (very thick) binders.
I'm assuming the issue is not with the possession but the fact the info was "exported"? So as long as I don't mail them to anyone out of country, it's completely legal?
Sorry if I'm missing the important parts. I just had a molar and neighboring wisdom tooth pulled so I'm a little out of it from the pain killers...
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It really depends on the exact wording of the latest distribution statement pertaining to those documents.
Maybe parts of it ARE classified, or maybe they have been declassified. The manual itself could be marked contrary to the latest guidance.
It seems the disclosure statement may require "military use only". I'm not sure of the enforceability of that today, but that alone could exclude use by even U.S. persons if they are civilians.
If documents were unclassified and did not have restrictions for official/military use only, hypothetically one could distribute them to any U.S. person (citizen or certain non-citizen statuses). For obvious reasons, it's pretty common for technical documents to have restricted distribution that keeps it within a company (e.g. Lockheed Martin) or the military. Very few documents get through the bureaucracy of official approval for public release, and the ones that do generally contain very few details about the systems they describe.
I strongly suspect that the DCS sim manuals are completely fine. The smuggled documents at issue are authentic technical manuals.