War Thunder: Indonesia's Harimau Tank Joins Japan's Tech Tree

War Thunder is preparing to add the Harimau, a real-world Indonesian light tank, to Japan's ground forces tree as a Rank VII vehicle. Developer Gaijin Entertainment revealed the addition through an official devblog, confirming the Harimau will carry a 105mm Cockerill gun, modern fire-control electronics, and a tracked chassis built for speed over firepower or protection. The vehicle isn't live yet — this is a development preview ahead of an upcoming major update — but the specs already give a clear picture of how it will play.

What the Harimau Brings to the Battlefield

According to the devblog, the Harimau is built around four core strengths:

• A rapid-fire 105mm gun paired with the DM63 APFSDS round, one of the strongest shells available at that caliber.
• Modern thermal imagers for spotting targets in poor visibility or through smoke and foliage.
• A laser warning system and laser rangefinder, giving it solid situational awareness and first-shot accuracy at range.
• Strong mobility from its tracked platform, letting it reposition quickly across uneven terrain.

The tradeoff is armor. The Harimau's hull and turret are built from lightweight alloys, so it won't survive a straight trade with a main battle tank. Gaijin's own framing is blunt about this: land the first shot accurately, or expect a fast trip back to the hangar.

How the Harimau Plays: Support, Not Slugfest

Sitting in Japan's tree as a light tank, the Harimau is designed to work both solo and alongside heavier vehicles. Its combination of speed, sensors, and rate of fire makes it well suited to capturing objectives, flanking around the main fight, and drone-assisted reconnaissance — spotting for teammates rather than tanking hits itself. That makes positioning the main skill required to use it well: staying mobile, picking fights it can win in one or two shots, and falling back before an enemy MBT can return fire.

The Cockerill Turret: A Familiar System

The Harimau's turret won't be entirely new to War Thunder players. It uses the same modular Cockerill turret system found on the Boxer MGS and the CT-CV 105HP, both already in the game. That means the core hardware — a 105mm rifled gun with a 7.5-second autoloader cycle, thermal imaging, and a laser rangefinder — is a known quantity, tested and adjusted across two other vehicles before reaching the Harimau.

What sets the Harimau apart from those two is its chassis. Where the Boxer MGS and CT-CV 105HP ride on wheels, the Harimau runs on tracks. That trades a bit of top-end speed for a lower profile and noticeably better handling on rough or unstable ground — a meaningful difference when the vehicle's whole role depends on staying mobile under fire.

Where It Lands in Japan's Tech Tree

Gaijin has placed the Harimau directly after the Type 16 wheeled tank destroyer, at the very end of Japan's light tank line. In the developer's own explanation, the reasoning comes down to two things the Harimau does better than the Type 16: it fires a stronger APFSDS round, and its autoloader cycles significantly faster. The Type 16 still wins on outright top speed thanks to its wheeled platform, but the Harimau's tracks give it an edge in off-road mobility that the Type 16 can't match.

The intent, per the devblog, is for the Harimau to round out Japan's line at Rank VII with a vehicle that can both scout ahead of and support the nation's higher-ranking main battle tanks — filling a support and recon role rather than duplicating what Japan's heavier tanks already do.

The Real Harimau: An Indonesian-Turkish Design

Unlike many of War Thunder's tech-tree vehicles, the Harimau isn't a paper design or a one-off prototype — it's a tank already in active service. It's the product of a joint program between Indonesia's PT Pindad and Turkey's FNSS Defence Systems, agreed upon by the two countries in 2015 and known as the Kaplan MT on the Turkish side. Development ran through prototype testing before the tank entered mass production in 2020, and the Indonesian Army has since taken delivery of units built to replace its aging AMX-13 light tanks. That real-world pedigree is likely part of why War Thunder singled it out for its own devblog feature rather than folding it in as a routine tech-tree filler.

What to Watch For

Since this is a development preview rather than a patch-notes entry, none of the numbers above are final — armor values, exact mobility figures, and the battle rating the Harimau lands at can all shift before it actually ships. Players eyeing Japan's light tank line should treat this as a heads-up to plan around, not a vehicle to grind toward just yet. Keep an eye on Gaijin's official channels for the update that brings the Harimau out of preview and into the tech tree.

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