There’s a game out there called War Thunder that not a whole bunch of people have played. It’s not an unknown game by any means, but it isn’t at the forefront when folks think of military shooters. What really separates War Thunder apart, though, is its attention to detail. If you have ever wanted to know what it was like to go through a battle with a military vehicle, then War Thunder is the game to play. It has been frequently praised for having gameplay that is as close to realistic as possible, and it’s that realism that draws in fans.
Unfortunately, because the internet is what it is, that realism also leads to fans who think they know better than the game or even each other. War Thunder has a very active message board for fans to discuss the game or, if they’d like, actual military vehicles. Sometimes those discussions get heated, as any internet argument will, and people will begin pulling out their knowledge to prove they are the smartest person ever. This can lead to rather funny — or terrible, depending on your security clearance — results where people will post actual classified documents to an internet forum. This has happened so often that it has its own section on Wikipedia.
Unfortunately for the poor moderators over at the War Thunder forums, it appears to have happened again, this time in regards to an F16, and then shortly after, someone else went ahead and shared classified information about the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle. This led to the moderators and even the game’s social person to once again beg people to stop sharing classified information on their forums.
*deep breath* DO 👏 NOT 👏 SEND 👏 US 👏 CLASSIFIED 👏 DOCUMENTS. This is not reverse psychology. For real, i’m running out of jokes about this. We cannot use them (it’s sort of “turbo illegal”), and the people posting them can get into serious trouble.
— War Thunder (@WarThunder) January 18, 2023
This has become such a problem that someone on Reddit went so far as to claim that a friend of theirs interviewed for a position at Raytheon, only to be asked if they had played War Thunder as part of their security clearance. This was quickly debunked by VideoGame Sports Illustrated, where a comment from Raytheon confirmed that the video games you play have nothing do with your job prospects or your clearance. The social person for War Thunder was happy with this, but also seems pretty exhausted by everything.
If you happen to find yourself in an argument over military vehicles on the War Thunder forums, please do everyone a favor and keep classified documents out of your argument.
