😄Thunder Show: EXPRESS DELIVERY

Welcome to Thunder Show and the shiniest moments of the past week!

▶️PGZ88: SPAA with a Tank’s Attitude

Anti-aircraft vehicles stopped being useful only when enemy aircraft appear a long time ago. Many of them are so effective against ground targets that they can influence the course of a battle from its opening minutes. The Chinese PGZ88 is one such machine.

▶️F-101 Voodoo: Fighter That Outlived Its Concept

The end of the Second World War gave the United States military only a brief respite. The Cold War that followed demanded no less effort, along with an enormous amount of work from engineers and military theorists. During the struggle against the Axis powers, the U.S. Air Force had refined several existing concepts and developed new ones. One of them was the penetration fighter: a fast, long-range aircraft capable of escorting strategic bombers deep into enemy territory and breaking through hostile air defenses. In essence, it was an evolution of the traditional escort-fighter concept.

▶️British Vehicles with RARDEN Cannons

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “automatic cannon”? Usually, it’s something with an extremely high rate of fire, like an aircraft-mounted Vulcan or an Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun. But some automatic cannons fire much more slowly. Today we’ll take a look at one of them: the British 30-mm L21A1, better known as the RARDEN.

❗️Unplanned Technical Maintenance

Dear players.

The game may not be available at the moment as we are experiencing some technical issues on our servers. We are endeavouring to fix these issues as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

❗️Hello friends! Maintenance is complete — thank you for your patience! As a result of the technical issues, we are extending all active Premium accounts by 2 hours.

‼️Fair Play: August 2026

Your reports and our anti-cheat systems continue to help us in the fight against cheaters. As is tradition, we’re sharing information about the bans issued since last Fair Play. If you want to help rid War Thunder of cheaters and unsportsmanlike players, you can learn how to submit a report and how our anti-cheat system works on our wiki.

🤕Banned accounts

Since our last fair play update, we have banned 3,471 accounts that were found to have violated the rules, specifically paragraph 3.2.3 of the EULA, namely the automation of gameplay (use of bots) and cheat software.

Additionally, 98 temporary bans were issued for violating paragraph 3.2.4 of the EULA. These violations included colluding with the opposing team to repeatedly capture zones and/or profiting from mutual damage without the intention of engaging in combat.

Furthermore, 278 accounts were banned for a week or longer for intentional teamkilling and griefing, including 10 permanent bans.
For complete transparency, we will publish the full list of permanently banned players. This list will be available for two weeks following the publication of this article.

📜For complete transparency, we will publish the full list of permanently banned players. This list will be available for two weeks following the publication of this article.

⭐️Recommendations
We recommend that you set a strong password for your account and enable two-step authentication in your profile security settings. We have the following 2FA options available: email, SMS, TOTP (Gaijin Pass/Google Authenticator).
We’d also suggest that you turn on 2FA for the email that is linked to your Gaijin account for additional security, as this will protect your account from fraudsters. And remember, don’t use prohibited client modifications and never share your account information with anyone.
The War Thunder Team

▶️Rank V Radar SPAA: Ready for Everything

Among the ground vehicles found at Rank 5, four self-propelled anti-aircraft guns stand out as vehicles situated right on the boundary between two technological eras. They differ from earlier SPAAs not just in their versatility or firepower, but in a key piece of equipment, as they are fitted with a radar — a defining feature of modern anti-air systems.