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Over 12 years since it first deployed onto PC, the popular combined-arms combat sim War Thunder is still soaring. How has Gaijin's free-to-play shooter stuck around for so long? Well, unlike most of its mil-themed peers, War Thunder pulls the focus out from infantry and towards the machinery of war, accurately recreating hundreds of the best-known war engines of land, sea, and air. So it's as much a military vehicle museum as it is an online shooter with all the addictive progression and unlocks you'd expect from a game that's survived this long.
Battles in War Thunder also have a unique sense of scale. As some players pulverise the battlefield from destroyers and battleships out at sea, others target the turrets, bridges, and other weakpoints of said ships from the skies, while hulking tanks grapple for control of the warhead-pocked battlefield on land. Over dozens of updates, War Thunder's devs have refined it to capture the impressive and terrifying impact of machines on some of the most iconic theatres of war.
Now, with the Ninth Wave update, War Thunder makes its first big impact of 2026, reworking popular maps, adding new vehicles, and fine-tuning mechanics to reaffirm its dominance over its corner of the online shooter arena.
First up: the White Rock Fortress makes a return. Always a bit controversial among veterans for its confined feel and shameless spawn-camping opportunities, it was still memorable for its dramatic visual style and layered design. It now returns with a visual overhaul, hopefully retaining some of that unique verticality that allowed plucky players to clamber through up tiers by getting up onto the walls, sticking out their turrets, and raining hell on hapless enemies while remaining unsighted.
The decimated streets and surrounding countryside of Ardennes also get a makeover, retaining the vast sightlines and dangerously open navigation while embellishing the battlefield with more ruins, abandoned remnants of rural life… and puddles, so many gloriously reflective muddy puddles for you to slosh your caterpillar tracks through.
It's not all just graphical spit-and-polish though. The feel of the game has received some tweaks too. The radar—that all-seeing eye on the battlefield—has been improved. You can now zoom in on specific parts of the radar screen to get a more granular view on enemy movements, use your cursor to control radar on ground vehicles, and new filters can now be toggled to better identify targets.
Ever the game for fine details, War Thunder's aircraft damage has been refined, with rudder and elevator controls no longer being tied to stabiliser surfaces. This means you can still control plane rudders until their control rods are directly destroyed. Granted, maybe not something most players will notice, but exactly the kind of attention to detail that hardcore players have come to appreciate from Gaijin.
Water behaviour is a huge factor in making naval battles feel dramatic, and to that end water physics have been reworked. Waves are more realistic, with sharper crests in choppy waters, and improved foam and splash physics make you really feel the shockwaves when you get a near miss from a missile 100 feet away from you. Tracers are now much clearer on naval gunfire, helping you identify where the shots are coming from.
Beyond that, there are all kinds of new vehicles for military history buffs to mount up into. The Italian aircraft tree gets a new branch of Hungarian prop planes from the early 20th century, the German twin-engine ME 210 makes its debut, as do dozens of other tanks, ships, and planes from across the historical and modern military world.
History buffs, meanwhile, will love poring over the MiG-29M (9-15), which was one of the last gasps of Soviet military engineering before the USSR collapsed. This model never made it to mass production, but served as a design template for the MiG aircraft of today. With eight wing hardpoints, it has great loadout flexibility for you to experiment with, and works nicely with the latest update's improvements to the missile selection UI when respawning.
The Ninth Wave update is out now, and it probably goes without saying at this point that War Thunder is free to play, so you can go and download it from Steam or straight from the official War Thunder website. It's time to take its latest iteration for a spin around the battlefield.
