Classified military intel somehow posted to War Thunder forums for third time
If we had a nickel for every time this happened, we'd only have three, but it's weird that it's happened thrice.
.jpg?width=70&height=70&fit=crop&quality=60&format=png&auto=webp)
Somehow, some classified military documents have appeared on the forums for War Thunder, for the third time.
You could maybe, somehow, just about justify the fact that some military documents were shared on a forum dedicated to a war-sim game. That happening a second time? OK, well, clearly these things happen, but we should probably keep them under wraps a bit better, no? However, as reported by the UK Defence Journal, this has happened for a third time, on this occasion regarding a Chinese piece of hardware.
According to UK Defence Journal, images appeared online May 31 showing off a Chinese DTC10-125 tungsten penetrator, sat on top of a document that detailed the projectile. The document goes into some technical malarkey that most people wouldn't care about, except for the person who shared the document in an attempt to correct an issue with its in-game counterpart.
The post was taken down by Gaijin Entertainment as soon as the developer was made aware of it. But you do have to wonder what people with access to this classified information think the definition of classified is.
And noted by PC Gamer, it's entirely possible that sharing these documents wasn't even necessary. One user on Resetera pointed out how the shell was added to a public development server, and that its values for things like penetration weren't necessarily set in stone. So ultimately, if the original poster of the classified documents had just waited a tad, they could have avoided committing a pretty weird crime.
Gaijin Entertainment also provided a statement to PC Gamer on the matter, saying "Our community managers immediately banned the user and deleted his post, as the information on this particular shell is still classified in China.
"Publishing classified information on any vehicle of any nation at War Thunder forums is clearly prohibited, and the game developers never use it in their work.
"While we understand that our players want the game to be as realistic as possible, we're kindly asking them not to do anything illegal and jeopardize their safety, as well as safety of our community team members. The developers of War Thunder do their best to research information on vehicles using legally available tools, and scandals like this are clearly not useful for our efforts."