It’s a day ending in “y” so you know what that means: as per tradition, military documentation not cleared for public release has once more been posted on the War Thunder forums in order to win an argument about a piece of hardware. If this sounds familiar, maybe it’s because you’ve previously read about leaks involving the Eurofighter Typhoon and F117 Nighthawk, or the M2A2 Bradley.
A brief primer: War Thunder is developed by Gaijin Entertainment, a free-to-play military sim with real-world hardware from various eras. The game’s schtick is realism and attention to detail, which attracts a considerably knowledgeable crowd of enthusiasts, including military personnel, who like to argue over the veracity of how the game simulates various vehicles.
Which is how we end up with things like a June 21 thread titled “All Harrier 2 missing extreme maximum G factor,” where a War Thunder player called MatrixRupture decided to take the red pill. “We all know the Harriers are terribly incorrect,” they begin. “Since the AV-8B manuals have been opened to be shared let’s take a look… All that needs to change is the out-of-balance motion.”
The text was accompanied by source material, in this case a page from the NATOPS AV-8B and TAV-8B Harrier flight manual.
Community Manager Smin1080p_WT was on it instantly: these people have been here before. The material was immediately removed, the OP temporarily banned, and the thread locked with the following familiar statement:
“The source you attempted to post is NOT cleared for public use and is very clearly marked ‘DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT C’ [on] its front cover. No source material that is restricted, export restricted or classified will ever be tolerated, handled or used in any way on any of our platforms.”
This is accompanied by a link to the War Thunder rules on posting source material, which is the top-stickied post atop the most popular of the game’s forums: not that it seems to make much difference. War Thunder’s “Restrictions on Classified and Export Restricted information” are mere guidelines for this fanbase.
The community reaction to the material being posted is either amusement of the “we did it again boys” variety, or players harrumphing over the distinction between classified documents and something marked with “Distribution Statement C,” which means it’s restricted to authorised US government personnel and contractors.
It is true that certain War Thunder leaks have been way more serious than others in terms of classification, and some of them have involved posting material that can be found relatively easily online. But you can almost feel Gaijin’s community managers banging their collective heads against a wall at this point, just muttering “don’t post any restricted material” over and over and over again.
At least there’s no regional bias though. The Harrier material takes its place in a proudly global tradition, with previous leaks including documentation for US aircraft like the F-16, F-15E, and F-117, China’s ZTZ-99, the Eurocopter Tiger and Eurofighter Typhoon, the UK’s Challenger 2 tank, and France’s Leclerc. Gotta win those forum arguments about turret movement range.
“This probably isn’t the biggest leak ever, not at all,” a former RAF engineer told the UK Defence Journal. “These kinds of manuals float around online, especially older ones. But that doesn’t change the fact that if it’s marked as controlled or restricted, platforms like War Thunder have no choice but to take action.”
Every time this happens, Gaijin Entertainment eventually gives the community some sort of reminder that such material will never be used to alter in-game vehicles. But it always falls on deaf ears. It has once again been 0 days since restricted military material has leaked on the War Thunder forums: see you again soon.
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