Should 1:25000 maps be military secret?

[VetLegion]

What do you think?

It just happened in my country that some people have been taken to 'informative talks' (interrogations?) with the police because they own maps of the entire country in 1:25000 scale, on CDs.

These were scanned maps, and server that offered them publicly was also taken down. It was maintained by a bycicle organization.

It appears we have a law that says these maps are military secret because they can be used for calculating artilery attacks

Incredible. I also own a set of these maps on CDs, but so do thousands of other people and ofcourse, the military of all our neighbouring countries

I have to wander how can laws like this exist?


I am interested does anyone here from the former east bloc have simmilar situation in their country... to my knowledge, 1:25k maps are freely available in all western states.

[JohnT]

And your country is... ? I could look up the flag, but why?

Here in the US you can buy high-quality maps, showing longitudes/latitudes, military installations, office parks, large factories, and etc for a mere $3.95 at your local gas station. You can also buy a copy of Delormes Street Atlas USA, which has the entire country mapped at a detail of 1:5000.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

The country is Croatia, and sure we have many idiotic laws leftover from communist time still in practice, but to act now, a little late, after the war. And the police inspector in charge of this should be given a whopping They surely should have more important things to do over there.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Perhaps if you buy the map you get a leftover howitzer for free

[TheStinger]

Bizzare, as Serbia is Croatias most likley enemy I would have thought they would happen to have maps of Croatia anyway.

Seems like typical actions of a little Hitler

[Hurricane]

Military maps are supposed to be more accurate than civilian maps (street atlases are of little military use), but as long as that bicycle organisation didn't sell military maps, I don't see where the problem is.

To make one example, the Finnish archipelago has thousands of islands and tens of thousands of undervater rocks. The civilian charts are intentionally uncharted in some places, and often you can see military ships crusing in those waters at full speed.

Of course, I would be very surprised if the Russians haven't copied all those maps a long time ago.

[Combat Ingrid]

I heard that the Russian maps of Sweden are often more accurate and detailed than our own ones

[JohnT]

If Russian maps were more accurate than your average Thomas Guide, I'd be shocked.

Online maps suck though. I wouldn't trust an online map any further than I could throw it.

[bondetamp]

Didn't stop them from crashing a submarine in the archipelago, though, did it?

I know that Russia has some very detailed maps of Norway too. A map that was found a few years ago, had a map Trondhjem where even the thickness and quality of the pavement throughout the city was noted.

[Usually Insane]

on another note, there was one chief cartographer in sweden who commented: "if the map differs from the terrain, the terrain must be in error" or something along those lines, have you noticed that direct translations can dilute the best quotes?

[Harovan]

It depends on a couple of factors, if a map can be a military secret or not, not only on the scale. First off, many "free" maps are distorted. You won't notice this if you drive or walk by this map, but if you measure distances or angles across the map, you will. Second, many "free" maps are based on another reference ellipsoid. So for instance, free maps in Germany are based on the ellipsoid of Bessel, while military maps are based on the Hayford spheroid. This also results in minimal distortions, which render a map unusable for the calculation of artillery or missile strikes. Third, on "free" maps usually aren't printed the military rectangular grids. Longitude and Latitude are not of a big use, if you want to make precise calculations.

In many countries precise maps are considered a secret. Usually these countries provide two different sets of maps, those for civil use, on another ellipsiod, without the military grids and not providing a set of corrections, and military maps with all this additional data.

[DaShi]

I think they were upset about the big red X's on the map that said "Do not bomb here" on them.

[Urban Ranger]

1:25000 maps aren't that detailed anyway.

[Dauphin]

You can get ariel photo maps of the UK on the net at that resolution.

Bat and Ball

1) You can see the station on the bottom right, two gas tanks in the top left, and a small lake on the left.
2) You can make out most of the town and surrounding fields.

Both maps are set to overlay such that you can see the road names and other details.

Edit I can't get the first link to work, but you can zoom in twice in the link to see what I meant.

[Urban Ranger]

Not bad, but not detailed enough to plot artillery attacks.