War Thunder players have once again posted sensitive military documents on the game’s forums. In December 2023, a crew manual for the Norinco VT-4 tank and pages from a technical manual for the M2A2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle were posted within days of each other. Both were removed quickly, but the incidents renewed concerns about players sharing restricted material to win arguments about how accurately the game models its vehicles.
Updated October 2026. We corrected the details of the December 2023 leaks and the Gaijin quotes against the original reports, and added a timeline of earlier and later War Thunder forum leaks.
According to Task and Purpose, two pages from the Bradley’s technical manual, covering the commander’s hatch, turret assembly and spall liner assembly, were posted on December 12, 2023 and removed after several minutes. The documents were not legally classified, but they are export-controlled and meant only for the U.S. Department of Defense and its contractors. Gaijin Entertainment founder Anton Yudintsev said, “As far as we know, this particular leak did not appear on War Thunder forums first,” adding that “we can do nothing with what’s happening on other platforms.” The user who posted it was banned.
The VT-4 material, reported by Cyber Daily the same day, appeared to be a crew manual published by the Royal Thai Army for its version of the tank, covering the tank’s autoloader. It did not appear to be a restricted document, but forum moderators deleted the whole thread and reminded players that Gaijin’s rules forbid publishing classified information and export-restricted military-technical data.
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A Recurring Pattern of Leaks
These incidents were not one-offs. Task & Purpose described the Bradley post as the 14th time sensitive or classified information had leaked onto the War Thunder forums. Some notable cases include:
- July 2021: A user posted pages from a manual for the British Challenger 2 tank. The UK Ministry of Defence confirmed to Gaijin that the document was still classified.
- August and September 2023: Documents about the Eurofighter Typhoon and the AH-64 Apache helicopter were posted and removed.
- December 2023: The VT-4 and M2A2 Bradley posts described above.
- June 2025: A user posted material from a flight manual for the AV-8B Harrier. Gaijin’s head of public relations, Konstantin Govorun, told Task & Purpose it “took us a few minutes to take it down” and that the user “is now banned permanently.” By then, Gaijin said it had tracked roughly 20 similar leaks.
Gaijin’s response has stayed the same each time: it removes the posts, bans the users involved, says it does not use classified material when developing the game and asks players not to break the law on its forums.
