S’pore Hunter AFV to be added to vehicular combat video game 'War Thunder'

The Hunter Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) from Singapore will be featured and added to "War Thunder", a vehicular combat video game.

In a development news release on May 28 by Gaijin Entertainment, the Hungarian game developer said the combat vehicle will be added as part of an in-game update.

In-game

In-game, the Hunter AFV will be under the Israel ground forces tech tree, a system used in "War Thunder" to unlock and progress through playable military vehicles.

The game’s tech trees are divided among 10 nations: France, the U.S., Germany, USSR, Great Britain, Japan, China, Italy, Sweden, and Israel.

The vehicles are separated into four research trees: "Aviation" for fixed-wing aircraft, "Army" for ground combat vehicles, "Helicopters" for rotary-wing aircraft, and "Fleet" for naval vessels.

The developers noted that Singapore’s ground vehicles will be distributed among various in-game nations.

As to why the Hunter AFV is under the Israel ground forces tech tree, the developers are taking into account the characteristics and needs of both the vehicle itself and the nations where it might be added.

These characteristics could be technical or gameplay-related.

It cited the Hunter AFV’s weapon module is Israeli-made, and Israel has virtually no variety of light support combat vehicles in "War Thunder".

Its real-life counterpart has a remotely controlled Samson turret from the Israeli defence technology company, Rafael.

As such, the vehicle will be added to current and future vehicle lineups for Israel in-game

Hunter AFV

In real life, the Hunter AFV was jointly developed by ST Engineering, the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), and the Singapore Army.

Intending to replace the Singapore Army's M113 Ultra armoured personnel carriers, the development of the Hunter AFV began in 2006.

In 2019, the Hunter AFV was commissioned for the Singapore Army.

Besides the Samson turret, the vehicle is also armed with a 30 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II cannon, two SPIKE Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM), a 7.62x51mm coaxial machine gun, and eight 76 mm smoke grenade launchers.

It has a maximum range of 500km and a speed of 70km/h.