The SU-57 is the latest stealth fighter jet to be produced by Russia’s Sukhoi Aircraft Works. So far, only five are in service with Moscow’s air force, and the performance data are top secret.
The users of the forum for the online battlefield game “War Thunder” were all the more surprised when, in a debate about the fictitious performance values of the Russian flagship jet, a user quickly published secret Russian documents on the real dimensions and data in order to substantiate his argument.
Secret or not, the user with the cryptic game name “ZVO_12_INCH” was more concerned with having the upper hand in an online debate. To what extent the documents were actually genuine, whether they actually contained new information unknown to Western secret services, remained unclear at first – however, the moderators of the forum hastened to take the documents offline.
In the same debate, another user also published previously confidential instructions for the Eastern Bloc Mig 29 fighter jet – this document did not stay online for long either.
The two leaks were not the first military secrets on the forum. On the contrary: The “War Thunder” forum is now notoriously known for the fact that the fans of the game often deal with military equipment in real life and do everything to ensure that their favorite vehicles are represented in the game as realistically as possible, secret or not Not. Developed by Russian developer Gaijin Entertainment (formally based in the Hungarian capital, Budapest), the game allows players to compete against each other in hundreds of historical and modern military vehicles.
In the past few years, secret or at least confidential documents, data or photos have been published almost a dozen times – most recently almost every week.
Just to be right, users published data on the latest version of the American air-to-air missile AIM-120 and its integration with the US F16 fighter jet in mid-January. These documents were also promptly removed – the developers feared a conflict with US laws on the dissemination of weapons technology and deleted the data immediately.
In the summer of 2022, a Chinese War Thunder fan published a document explaining the penetration of the Chinese DTC10-125 anti-tank grenade, dissatisfied with the in-game ammunition penetration. The authenticity of the data has been confirmed by independent analysts.
A year earlier, a Brit who found the simulated maneuverability of the British main battle tank “Challenger 2” too slow, summarily published the real values for the tank’s turret yaw rate from a confidential instruction book. A French user promptly responded with matching real values for the French “Leclerc” tank.
At the same time, a German helicopter mechanic complained about the lack of detail in the simulated Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopter and therefore posted his own photos of the real plane online.
In a statement in the specialist publication “PC Gamer”, Gaijin Entertainment urgently warned its fans of the possible consequences of leaking secrets, and once again reminded them that sharing classified or restricted military information is not allowed.
“A user posted some information about AMRAAM missiles for the F16,” the studio said. “As far as we know, these documents are considered export-restricted and are not intended for public sharing or use. We always delete posts with classified information from our forum as soon as possible.”
Sharing the data for the purpose of game development is also pointless: “We never use such documents in our work.” Maybe not in the work of the Gaijin developers – but the posts in the “War Thunder” forums should now be particularly important are followed with great professional attention by military intelligence services of all nations.
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