Faced with imminent death, the two-member Bradley crew turned to experience in playing an online video game called War Thunder to destroy the much more powerful Russian T-90 battle tank. Serhiy the gunner knew his only chance of survival was to take out the Russian tank’s optics system, rendering it “blind.”
Also, just as amazingly, the driver of the Bradley had until recently only ever driven cars in the Ukrainian army. Serhiy had been in the infantry before an injury turned him into a gunner. This was just their second mission together.
And if all this sounds far-fetched and made up that one can learn anything useful from playing a video game, it was just last month that ironically parts of the technical manual for the Bradley were leaked in the War Thunder forum before being quickly taken down.
Source: Business Insider
A Ukrainian TV channel interviewed the two members of the Bradley crew, the commander and gunner Serhiy and driver Oleksandr, who were on their second mission together.
“We fired with all we could,” Serhiy said in the interview, per subtitles added by X account @wartranslated. “At first, with anti-armor. And then we started having issues.”
Serhiy described having “anti-armor” issues but did not elaborate on what those were. The X account speculated that they had problems with their armor-piercing ammunition.
The commander compared operating the Bradley vehicle to playing a video game and said this helped him plan how and where to hit the tank.
He said he had to stop the tank “at any cost” and started “blinding” the vehicle with rounds so it couldn’t leave, with a Forbes report elaborating that the team targeted the tank’s optics.
Astute commentary.
And some helpful pointers from the good people at War Thunder.
