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| Gamers "War Thunder" Leaked Confidential Data US Made F-16 and F-15 Fighter Jets |
International Military - Online game perfectionists in the precise modeling of their chosen arsenal have accidentally exposed military secrets on the internet again. This time they posted sensitive information about US-made F-16 and F-15 fighter jets on two separate occasions in just one week.
The game in question is "War Thunder". Players have previously spilled some classified tidbits on the British Challenger-2 battle tank, the French Leclerc tank, and the Chinese DTC10-125 anti-armor shell.
The latest disclosures concern the F-16 Fighting Falcon built by US defense contractor General Dynamics and the F-15E Strike Eagle made by McDonnell Douglas. “Like other leaks, this one appears on the discussion forums for War Thunder, where realistic online game players often take issue with the accuracy of their fake military hardware,” the PC Gamer report states.
In discussions on the F-16 that have dragged on since mid-2022, one player wrote on Jan. 16 about "an interesting thing I discovered during my research." Although the comments themselves are not very sensitive, the player known as spacenavy90 attached documents to prove his statements about the AIM-120 radar-guided missile and the jet's cockpit control panel. The document has limited distribution authorization, according to forum moderators.
Just two days after that, another forum member, RanchSauce39, reportedly posted a batch of Operational Flight Program software manuals for the F-15E, including details on its flight control, targeting, and weapons systems. As in similar cases involving other weapon systems, sensitive information was removed after being flagged by moderators and game developers. Distributing restricted military data in unauthorized places, such as online gaming forums, may result in civil or criminal penalties.
War Thunder developed by Gaijin Entertainment, a Budapest-based company with distinct Russian origins, lets players fight against each other using historical and modern military hardware. Many players drawn to the game were obsessed with accuracy and pressured game designers to get every detail right, in some cases supporting their arguments with limited material, such as a classified Challenger-2 manual that was shared in July 2021.
"We always remove posts containing confidential or prohibited information from our forums as soon as possible," said Gaijin in a statement to PC Gamer. “We prohibit our users from sharing documents like this on our platform. We repeatedly remind our users that it is illegal and useless, so they shouldn't do that. We have never used documents like this in our work,” he said. Meanwhile, gamers promise to "be more careful with the technical information that I post," spacenavy90 told PC Gamer.