Gamer posts restricted fighter jet document on War Thunder forum

An online forum dedicated to the combat video game War Thunder has been the subject of controversy after a user published restricted information about a fighter jet.

War Thunder, created by Gaijin Entertainment, is a free-to-play game where users battle one another using different types of war vehicles from various decades.

Users often debate the historical and performance accuracy of the vehicles through the War Thunder forum. So when users began debating the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet last week, it did not seem unusual.

Then one user found and posted a formerly classified document about the fighter jet.

User spacenavy90 posted the document which outlined information about the use of AIM-120 AMRAAM on the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet on Monday, 16 January.

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After posting, a user responded, “What is the restriction status on this if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Lad seriously do you have a proper source on that or if it is restricted materials?” Another person wrote.

Spacenavy90 defended the document saying it was “40 years old” and “allowed per Gaijin rules.”

Anton Yudintsev, the founder of Gaijin Entertainment told AeroTime, “We forbid our users to share documents like this on our platforms.”

@WarThunder

“We always delete posts containing classified or restricted information from our forum as soon as possible,” Yudinstev said in an email to AeroTime.

Forum moderators realized the document was not permitted “per the US Laws on restricted and export restricted data” and quickly removed it

Although the document's classified status had expired, it still had export-restricted data thus making it impermissible to publish,.

“We remind our users again and again that it’s both illegal and pointless, so they should never do that,” he added.

This is not the first time the War Thunder forum has been the site of classified document leaks.

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