Another War Thunder leak: player posts restricted F-16 documents

(Link / Archive)

Restricted documents pertaining to the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet have been published on an online forum dedicated to the popular video game, War Thunder.

The game, in which players battle each other with an array of historical and modern military vehicles, has been a source of numerous controversies. Disgruntled gamers have posted classified documents on multiple occasions to convince developers to change the portrayal of a vehicle found in the game.

The latest controversy was sparked by a post published on the game’s forum, created by user spacenavy90 on January 16, 2023.

“Interesting thing I found during my research. During early AMRAAM testing you can see how F-16A would equip the AIM-120 and use TWS on the non-MFD stores control panel “SCP”,” the user said.

A document, which has since been deleted by the moderators of the forum, was attached to the post. A moderator then replied to the post saying that the document contained export-restricted data and, as per US laws, publishing it is banned.

A discussion ensued, according to which the document posted by the user was either a F-16 flight manual or a part of it. While the ‘classified’ status of the manual has expired, the forum’s users argued, its distribution is still restricted and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Without knowing the nature of the document posted, AeroTime could not confirm its status.

A persistent problem
This is not the first reported incident where potentially classified or restricted documents regarding military vehicles have been posted by fans of the game.

The first such instance appears to have taken place in 2021, when excerpts from a British Challenger 2 tank user manual were posted on one of the game’s forums, an attempt made by one user to convince the game’s developers to revamp the in-game model of the tank.

In the coming years, various restricted documents pertaining to French-made Leclerc tanks and Chinese DTC10-125 anti-armor shells were also posted by users, followed up by a host of classified documents regarding China’s latest Type 99 tank.

In addition to tanks, the game’s players also posted restricted documents detailing armor layout on the Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopter.

Forum moderators promptly removed the documents in all these cases.

Forum rules have reportedly been modified to ban the behavior. Furthermore, in 2021 Gaijin Entertainment actively reached out to the users of the game, asking them to stop publishing classified documents. However, these efforts appear to have had limited success.

As noted by some reports, at least some of the restricted documents posted by the game’s fans had already been leaked and can be found elsewhere on the internet – a caveat that likely extends to the F-16 flight manuals in question.

However, publication of such documents may still be restricted by national law in some countries, as was the case with the manuals of Leclerc and Challenger tanks.

UPDATE 01-17-2023, 16:20(UTC +3): According to Konstantin Govorun, the Head of PR at Gaijin Entertainment, the documents contained in the post were considered export restricted and contained information the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) and its use on the F-16.

“We always delete posts containing classified or restricted information from our forum as soon as possible. We forbid our users to share documents like this on our platforms. We remind our users again and again that it’s both illegal and pointless, so they should never do that,” Govorun explained in an email to AeroTime.

“We never use them in our work and that policy will never change. Development team does not even look at the contents of the documents, moderators just check if the information on the military vehicle or armament in question is still classified or not. If the answer is a yes, we delete everything ASAP. Our game developers are never exposed to this information or the user posts that accompany the documents, so they are not influenced in any way by these situations,” Govorun added.

 

[Archie_Kimkicker]

Yup. People miss the fact that for a lot of the early war, Germany had significantly worse tanks than both the Western allies and Russia.

They just used em better.

The French military gets a bad rep in WWII for similar reasons. They fought where/when they could, and fought well, but French leadership spent most of the Battle of France playing phone, car, and plane tag while trying to figure out what the fuck they wanted to do. By the time they came up with a plan, the krauts had all but finished seal-clubbing everybody.

 

[Zryachy]

Woah, American MIC tongue Putin's anus once again! Don't forget to mention they also suck chinks micropenis with burning passion.

 

[Fools Idol]

How in the fuck does keep happening on a routine basis??

You got to win those Internet arguments somehow.

 

[Makhno]

You talk like a 47 year-old regional airline first officer who hasn't updated his apps in 4 years, but he just knows United is gonna be knocking down his door any minute now!

cannot refute anything I say so you continue with the ad hominems to attempt to heal your bruised ego because being confronted with the fact that you are a non thinking idiot who is emotionally manipulated by the media is just too adult a concept for you to handle.

 

[Archie_Kimkicker]

cannot refute anything I say so you continue with the ad hominems to attempt to heal your bruised ego because being confronted with the fact that you are a non thinking idiot who is emotionally manipulated by the media is just too adult a concept for you to handle.

I didn't even necessarily disagree with anything you said, I just think you are a niggerfaggot, and you should be euthanized since you are unable to handle social interactions properly. No different than a shitbull, really.

 

[Makhno]

I hate the Jew and Zelensky as much as the next guy but claiming Russian tank armor is superior to NATO is ridiculous given what history has shown in Desert Storm/Shield and all the kike wars against Muslim countries.

If I had to sit in a tank being shot by RPGs I'd pick a Challenger 2 or Abrams ahead of a Warsaw Pact vehicle.

I wouldn't take this place so seriously. You're not necessarily wrong with all your anti globalhomo sentiment but what's that got to do with War Thunder autists?

ROFL no one exports the domestic versions of their equipment; export models are all heavily cripplehammered and always have been by every nation who exports weapons to all but their closest allies in the time of war. All the shit that Iraqis used was two or three generations behind the coalition equipment and the current Russian versions. Their tanks have much better armor because they employ active and reactive protection systems to a much greater degree than we do. They implemented reactive armor in the 60's we didn't start adding it to the Abrams until the TUSK upgrade packages 15 years ago. Russia has had active protection on tanks since the early 80's we currently do not have any active protection modules installed in any significant numbers with first units only receiving them in 2020 and are using help from the Israelis to catch up. If you are in a tank taking any kind of man portable fire your safest bet is the Russian T-14 Armata, the new German Panther, the M1A2 SEPv3, and Israeli Merkava 4 with Trophy APS. Challenger 2 is a piece of over hyped shit designed for the massive open ground conflicts of the 80s and the British MOD has been waffling since 2016 on just how to update them; the urban protection on them is worst of NATO big 3 US/UK/Germany. As to what it has to do with ITT faggots called me a vatnigger for simply stating truths they were not mature enough to accept.

 

[Cpl. Long Dong Silver]

ROFL no one exports the domestic versions of their equipment; export models are all heavily cripplehammered and always have been by every nation who exports weapons to all but their closest allies in the time of war. All the shit that Iraqis used was two or three generations behind the coalition equipment and the current Russian versions. Their tanks have much better armor because they employ active and reactive protection systems to a much greater degree than we do. They implemented reactive armor in the 60's we didn't start adding it to the Abrams until the TUSK upgrade packages 15 years ago. Russia has had active protection on tanks since the early 80's we currently do not have any active protection modules installed in any significant numbers with first units only receiving them in 2020 and are using help from the Israelis to catch up. If you are in a tank taking any kind of man portable fire your safest bet is the Russian T-14 Armata, the new German Panther, the M1A2 SEPv3, and Israeli Merkava 4 with Trophy APS. Challenger 2 is a piece of over hyped shit designed for the massive open ground conflicts of the 80s and the British MOD has been waffling since 2016 on just how to update them; the urban protection on them is worst of NATO big 3 US/UK/Germany. As to what it has to do with ITT faggots called me a vatnigger for simply stating truths they were not mature enough to accept.

I was in Iraq when that one Challenger 2 survived 14 RPG hits so agree to disagree

 

[Makhno]

Yup. People miss the fact that for a lot of the early war, Germany had significantly worse tanks than both the Western allies and Russia.

They just used em better.

Don't forget the logistics; they also still had the gas to engage in the highly mobile maneuver warfare blitzkrieg tactics demanded. Most people really don't appreciate the degree to which fuel supply issues neutered the Axis after 41. Hitler went all in on the Caucus oil fields and North Africa then came up snake eyes effectively dooming Germany to a slow defeat by the end of that year.

I was in Iraq when that one Challenger 2 survived 14 RPG hits so agree to disagree

Well that depends what kind of RPG and if the people firing them are retarded insurgents too stupid to realize they are using anti-personnel rounds on armor then a Sherman tank from WW2 could conceivably survive that as well.

 

[TrulyMan]

Semper Fi brave nerd.


This isnt the first time btw: https://www.pcgamer.com/war-thunder...ks-classified-military-documents-to-prove-it/

 

[cia-log]

Every thing about the F-16 should be known by know. It was first introduced in service in 1978 44 years ago.

That's not how combat aircraft work. They receive upgrades over their operational lifespan, they don't just keep the same technology unchanged for decades in the things.

 

[Ego]

Hilariously this is going to be a compounded problem for Gaijin the more and more as they release airframes and tanks that are in active service. Just about every major nation in that game except for Russia has had a leak of some sort and while some have said "ahah Russia must be using Gaijin to farm classified intel of foreign powers!" the real reason Russia is so watertight on this issue is that every Russian vehicle in the game works better than Khrushchev or Putin could have hoped for.

I stand corrected, someone just leaked info on the SU-57, Congrats Russia on having your newest and shiniest shit leaked. Owned.

 

[TowinKarz]

Ultimately, arguing over the specific capabilities of any one tank vs another in the context of armed conflict is autistic as hell, because none of that matters without superior communication, control, and situational awareness, and both the Ukrainian and Russian armed forces have generously provided examples of what NOT to do.

This is why people like Ian, The Chieftain and Drachinifel do NOT do "Who wins in an X vs Y fight?" videos no matter how hard their fans ask - and they all give the same answer, more or less.

No video-game like "battle" between two machines, or guns, or people, constitutes a large enough sample size to be meaningful.

Wars are not fought in a series of 1 v 1 battles like an organized tournament- even when lone examples of tanks accidentally find each other in some remote corner of the theatre, they're still acting as small bits of a much larger machine, and it's the health of THAT machine, the overall WAR machine, that decides who "wins".

So even if World of Tanks or War Thunder had 100% accurate models of the equipment in question? It still isn't a realistic example of anything because real battles are not 10 v 10 affairs shut off from the outside world with a timer running. If an objective was that important? And your armored column sent to take it was wiped out by enemy armor? Command would just say "Oh well, guess we lost it fair and square, damn campers!" ?

Aw Hell naw.... They'd send in B-52's to carpet bomb the crap out of the area and then follow it up with infantry armed with anti tank weapons to take it that way.

To say nothing of the fact that people in a simulation, who have no problem "dying" are going to try/do things with their tanks that in real life would NEVER be done because it's suicidal and you don't respawn IRL.

 

[Wesley Willis]

There's a scene in the new Top Gun where Maverick asks if they'd read the manual for their jets and then throws it in the trash and says "so has your enemy".

 

[Snekposter]

To say nothing of the fact that people in a simulation, who have no problem "dying" are going to try/do things with their tanks that in real life would NEVER be done because it's suicidal and you don't respawn IRL.

I would like to remind you of the Battle of Arracourt, where the Germans really did lemming march their tanks to certain doom by following the exact same plan of attack multiple times in a row thinking that the poor visibility that prevented fighter-bomber strikes wouldn't also allow the US tankers to take advantage of that natural concealment and the terrain to launch flanking strikes.

Nothing enrages Wehraboos so much as bringing up that masterpiece of tactics and strategy.

 

[TowinKarz]

I would like to remind you of the Battle of Arracourt, where the Germans really did lemming march their tanks to certain doom by following the exact same plan of attack multiple times in a row thinking that the poor visibility that prevented fighter-bomber strikes wouldn't also allow the US tankers to take advantage of that natural concealment and the terrain to launch flanking strikes.

Nothing enrages Wehraboos so much as bringing up that masterpiece of tactics and strategy.

You can also add the fact that none of these games simulate other things that a "realistic" game should - like, being unable to go into battle with a full load of ammo? Or your tank running out of gas halfway through the match? Because German logistics of the era were basically a wish list.

Or that you have a 50-50 chance of your tank actually loading in to any battle vs. getting a popup warning that it's still at the forward maintenance depot waiting for a new transmission, same as last week.... because French partisans have once again bombed the rail network?

But I was really talking more about things like "I don't have the barrel depression to hit him from here, I'll just yeet off this cliff and shoot him mid-fall!" or that you can do a handbrake turn at full speed to get out of trouble and it works instead of tearing up the treads and leaving you a sitting duck.

 

[Snekposter]

that you can do a handbrake turn at full speed to get out of trouble and it works instead of tearing up the treads and leaving you a sitting duck.

@Drifting Panzer he's calling you out here!

But yes, you're right about the goofy, silly stuff, but since I rarely encountered that when I played it slipped my mind.

And don't get me started on gun depression shit thanks to Gaijin eliminating any and all reverse slopes between ten and 2 degrees for some reason.

 

[TowinKarz]

And don't get me started on gun depression shit thanks to Gaijin eliminating any and all reverse slopes between ten and 2 degrees for some reason.

WG is arguably worse, Jingles has pointed out numerous times that the barrel depression of some tanks is, well, physically impossible as unless you've removed the gun breech, the top of the turret is in the way....

 

[Snekposter]

WG is arguably worse, Jingles has pointed out numerous times that the barrel depression of some tanks is, well, physically impossible as unless you've removed the gun breech, the top of the turret is in the way....

Yeah, but Wargaming doesn't even pretend to be historically accurate, so its not something I care too much about aside from an eye roll. Certainly nothing as egregious for overall design and balance as Gaijin eliminating slopes from maps for absolutely zero stated reason but since everyone but Russia could make use of them due to superior gun depression, well... people can guess why.

 

[Exterminatus]

WG is arguably worse, Jingles has pointed out numerous times that the barrel depression of some tanks is, well, physically impossible as unless you've removed the gun breech, the top of the turret is in the way....

That's understandable, WOT is much much more an arcade game. War Thunder prides itself more on being realistic, even if there is still Russian bias in both games. Like World of Warships has the Sovetsky Soyuz, a proposed Russian battleship that defied the laws of physics with her design proposals, but Stalin wanted battleships to rival America and the UK, another example is Kearsarge. A proposed battleships/aircraft carrier hybrid. It was based on a real design that the United States tried to sell to the Russians but they weren't interested. So they dip much more into blueprints for tanks and ships.