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Every type of journalism has its repetitions. Property journalists will write ‘House prices are rising’ a hundred times in their careers, political journalists will be forced to declare ‘Government announces policy reversal’ most weeks, and sports journalists will wear the rubber of ‘Lewis Hamilton wins Grand Prix’. price’. In game journalism we repeat: ‘War Thunder players leak military documents’.
Since 2019, players of the multiplayer military sim share limited and secret military documents countless times. Sometimes it’s just to show off something they’ve found out about a vehicle they enjoy driving in the game, other times it’s to win an argument. However, this week could be a new record, with two separate weapon manual leaks.
The first leak was in a discussion about the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet. Players discussed what weapons could be mounted on the plane when user Spacenavy90 shared a document (opens in new tab)saying “Interesting what I found during my research. During early AMRAAM testing you can see how the F-16A would equip the AIM-120 and use TWS on the non-MFD shop control panel ‘SCP’. While this may seems like an innocent but jargon-laden claim about a fighter jet’s specs, there turned out to be more to it than meets the eye.
A reply to Spacenavy90’s post (opens in new tab) pointed out that the document could only be distributed within the US Department of Defense and authorized US government agencies because it contained “export controlled technical data”. The penalty for sharing export-controlled data can be as much as $1 million per violation (opens in new tab) and a 10-year prison sentence.
Moderators quickly removed the document.
Another one for luck
You’d think that would be enough to break federal law for a week, but two days later, in a thread about the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet, user RanchSauce39 shared a stack of tech manuals on an early version of the plane. . According to Air time (opens in new tab)these documents date from 1998 – 2000, but although more modern versions of the jet are now available, the F-15E Suite 3 may still be in service.
The documents appear to have been released, but as with the F-16 leak, their distribution is likely limited.
After deleting RanchSauce39’s message, a War Thunder community manager posted (opens in new tab), (in, I imagine, a bit tense tone), “Guys, I’m going to say this very clearly for everyone. If you can’t definitively prove that something is legal, publicly available, fully released, and without any restrictions, don’t post it at all.”
Challenging situation
At first glance, this may seem like a funny story about passionate war game fans sharing things they’ve found without thinking. And one would hope that they wouldn’t be able to get their hands on an overly sensitive document without a level of approval that would entail a level of accountability. But that’s not always the case.
In 2019, a player claiming to be a Challenger 2 tank commander tried to convince developer Gaijin Entertainment that he hadn’t modeled the vehicle correctly. To make their point, they shared excerpts from the tank owner’s manual. They had omitted bits of information, but the British Ministry of Defense contacted Gaijin’s moderators to tell them that the document was still classified and that sharing it was against the Official Secrets Act, a crime punishable by two years. can be imprisoned. It is also worth noting that the British government sent 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine earlier this month, so these are not military relics, but weapons systems in active use.
Basically, if you want to make a point on a gaming forum, don’t share a secret military document – just make a meme like everyone else.