[Task and Purpose] Fans of the free-to-play military video game "War Thunder" are so passionate about the game that they’ve taken to sharing actual classified schematics for real-life military vehicles in an effort to win arguments with complete strangers online. If three make a trend, well, this is a trend. Because now there is another instance of someone apparently leaking classified military documents to make sure that their tank video game more accurately conforms with reality.
The popular armored combat simulator features modern land, air, and sea craft, and has a devoted following of roughly 50,000 players. And some of them seemingly can’t help themselves from leaking classified military data to make the gaming experience more accurate.
The latest incident, first reported by the OSINTtechnical Twitter account, involves information in Mandarin on the penetrator section of a Chinese tank round along with a technical diagram.
While many of the original images have been taken down, they were essentially the schematics for a Chinese tank munition, presumably revealed to the world so a video game could more accurately depict what would happen if a Chinese tank and an American tank — or British, French, Russian, German or Israeli tank — met in combat.
And this isn’t the first time these forums have become an outlet for technical leaks.
Back in July 2021, someone who very possibly could have been a commander in the Royal Tank Regiment of the United Kingdom, uploaded some documents to the "War Thunder" forums detailing the technical specifications of Britain’s Challenger 2 tank. Presumably, this was in an effort to prove that the game had gotten details wrong about the tank.