Again, a discussion on the War Thunder online combat game forum led to the leak of classified documents. This time the “victim” was the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter, an aircraft that recently arrived in the game. 

It is common for forum users and other groups related to the game to use documents to validate their arguments. However, some of these materials are still classified as secret, restricted or classified, which could cause problems for the Russian company Gaijin, the game's producer. 

That's what happened yesterday (16), in a thread where the forum members talked about the F-16, its performance and capabilities. It should be noted that the F-16, deployed in the game in its most recent update apex predators, was already quite expected by players, so the subject is “hot” among forum users. 

However, the post from user spacenavy90 early Monday morning went a step further. In presenting a discovery he had made about the use of AIM-120 AMRAAM missile on early versions of the F-16, he attached a document whose distribution was limited to the Pentagon and export was prohibited. 

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“Something interesting I discovered during my research. During early AMRAAM trials, you can see how the F-16A would equip the AIM-120 and use TWS [a radar operating mode] on the non-MFD stations' "SCP" control panel", said the user. 

The attached document was quickly deleted by moderators. Then another user named MiG_23M attached more images, showing that the documents released by the colleague were, in fact, restricted. 

This is the last of several other episodes in which the War Thunder forum served as a “platform” for leaking documents. The first time happened in 2021, when a player published confidential data from the British Challenger II war tank. Since then, this has happened repeatedly. The Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopter, the French AMX Lecrerc tank and the Chinese Type 99 were also “victims” of leaks. 

In response to portal aerotime, Konstantin Govorun, head of public relations at Gaijin, said that sharing these materials is prohibited on its platforms, and that the company has a policy of not using the documents. “The development team does not even look at the content of the documents, the moderators just check whether the information on the vehicle or military weaponry in question is still classified or not,” he said.