Military documents leak on the forum of a video game
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Blueprints of several tank models, including the French Leclerc tank, have been leaked by ‘War Thunder’ players.
They wanted a more realistic game. Players from “War Thunder», a Hungarian war game where you pilot planes, ships and tanks, were not satisfied with the design of the virtual vehicles. To ask the developers to strive to get closer to reality, part of the community leaked official military documents.
According to the Washington Post“players of War Thunder, a popular and free video game (…) have published classified documents three times, concerning three tanks of British, French and Chinese design”, between 2021 and 2022. The newspaper also says that another player, having presented himself as a member of a French armored unit, published a manual for the French tank Leclerc S2.
More fear than harm
All three posts have been removed from the forum. However, it would seem that no national authority has, for the moment, attested to the authenticity of the documents. For the Challenger model, the British authorities only confirmed the “top secret” dimension of the documents. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces did not speak.
Read alsoGermany, accused of slowing the delivery of tanks to Ukraine
But if some information can be sensitive, they are, like the rotation speed of a turret for example, freely available on the internet. The Washington Post interviewed armor specialists who consider the documents to be of little importance and their revelation to have little impact. These are user manuals that are classified as “secret”, but are distributed to anyone who may have some connection to the tank, from driver to maintenance. These leaks can be of interest if an agent of a foreign power is looking for specific information about a military tool, such as the type of armor.
Anton Yudinstev, the founder of the studio which also manages the discussions, explained that the moderation monitored this kind of exchanges. The creator Gaijin gives himself the right to ban players who reveal sensitive documents. Before adding that it would be wiser to inform the players to make them understand that any file which would not help the improvement of the game has no interest on the discussion forum.
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