A “War Thunder” user has shared sensitive military documents on its official forums.
The title is a free-to-play vehicular combat multiplayer game, developed by Gaijin Entertainment and was released in 2013. Users have used its discussion boards to criticize how real-world vehicles or weapons are portrayed in the game — and they’ve used official documents to back up their arguments.
“As far as we know, this particular leak did not appear on ‘War Thunder’ forums first,” Gaijin’s founder Anton Yudintsev told military site Task and Purpose about the latest instance. “It was published online on Dec. 8 or even earlier and has been spreading on various platforms for days until it landed on ‘War Thunder’ forums. While we did our part in helping to limit the leak spreading further by deleting that post, we can do nothing with what’s happening on other platforms.”
Moderators of “War Thunder” forums have banned individuals from the sites for using official Army papers to back up their points about the portrayal of weaponry in the game and removed sensitive information as quickly as possible.
Task and Purpose says it has happened 14 times in recent years. The most recent example happened earlier this month when a user uploaded two pages from the technical manual for the M2A2 Bradley Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicle. It allegedly contained details of both the commander’s hatch and turret assembly, including information on the types of nuts and bolts used.
While the documents aren’t classified, they are only meant to be available to the U.S. Department Of Defense and its contractors in the interest of national security.
In 2021, the Official Secrets Act was broken when a “War Thunder” user shared classified information about the Challenger 2 tank. Weeks later, a user claiming to be a French army tank crewman leaked part of the Leclerc Main Battle Tank’s classified user manual.
“IN BRIEF: you are not allowed to publish any Classified information and Export-restricted military-technical data,” a community manager has warned on a “War Thunder” forum about the practice.
