War Thunder 2.57.1.43 Fixes Hidden Aircraft, Rebalances Scimitar, Reshapes Nuclear Escalation Queues

War Thunder's update 2.57.1.43, published 23 July 2026, is a targeted maintenance patch drawn largely from community bug reports — but it carries one structural change to Nuclear Escalation matchmaking that will be felt beyond a simple fix.

What changed

Aircraft

• IAR-81C (DB 605): A bug that hid the aircraft from the tech tree while a test-drive was active has been fixed.
• MiG-29SMT (9-19): Chaff was absent from the aircraft's available countermeasures; this has been corrected.

Ground Vehicles

• Scimitar Mk.2: Battle Rating raised from 8.0 to 8.3 across all game modes. Three separate bugs were also resolved: a misplaced machine gun muzzle flash, gunner optics positioned inside the turret geometry, and those same optics having unlimited aiming angles — a meaningful gameplay correction.

Naval

• Project 956: A bug that occasionally caused the destroyer to ignore air targets has been fixed.

Nuclear Escalation — queue balancing

• At battle ratings 10.3–12.7, Great Britain, Sweden, and France can now be placed on the same team as the USSR and China.
• A separate preset for the 11.7–12.7 bracket pairs the USA and Germany against all other nations.

The Scimitar's BR adjustment combined with its optics fix makes the vehicle a more honest representation of its intended role, while the Nuclear Escalation presets suggest Gaijin is actively managing queue health at the mode's higher tiers rather than leaving matchmaking to sort itself out.