Footage shows an attack from Yemen on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Red Sea or Arabian Sea.
One clip is taken from a military simulation video game Arma 3, while the other footage shows an unrelated fire on a different US Navy vessel in 2020.
Posts on social media are sharing footage they falsely claim shows attacks from Yemen on a US aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea.
One clip supposedly shows missiles being fired at ships in the distance and seemingly striking two of them. Several posts also share another video including three clips of a ship engulfed in smoke with text at the bottom saying: “Scenes from the burning of the American aircraft carrier Abraham.”
Some posts have shared the clips or stills from the footage with the caption: “Yemeni Armed Force carried out 2 successful operations targeting the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in Arabian Sea with cruise missiles & drones & 2 US destroyers with no.of Ballistic missiles & drones in Red Sea. [sic]”
Other posts claim: “US Navy USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) aircraft carrier has been attacked with cruise missiles from Yemen in the Arabian Sea, after US strikes on Houthis.”
However, the clips do not show USS Abraham Lincoln or an attack by Yemeni forces, or Yemen, in the Arabian Sea. None of the footage is related to recent events in the Middle East.
The clip of missiles being fired at ships is actually gameplay footage from the military simulation video game Arma 3. It has been taken from a video shared on YouTube in January 2024 titled “INSTANT REACTION FROM IRAN! Houthi Cruise Missile sinks US aircraft carrier near Yemen”. The video’s description says it is “NOT real footages [sic], just Arma 3 gameplay”.
This isn't the first time we’ve seen footage from Arma 3 shared as though it is real. Bohemia Interactive, the Czech gaming studio that created the game, wrote a useful guide to distinguishing videos from their game to real-word footage, which includes looking out for low resolution, a shaky camera and no sound.
We’ve actually written about this particular clip before—it circulated in February with claims it showed “four ships coming under ballistic missile attacks from the Houthis”. The Houthis are an Iran-backed rebel group in Yemen, and are separate from the internationally recognised Yemeni government.
While the second clip being shared online is footage of a real incident, it shows a fire onboard a different US naval vessel—USS Bonhomme Richard—on 12 July 2020. It was moored in San Diego at the time.
A longer and clearer version of the video was shared by the US Navy with the description: “A helicopter from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 3 combats a fire aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6).”
As we’ve previously written when we saw the footage being miscaptioned, a ‘6’ is visible on the vessel’s superstructure later in the clip. This identifies it as USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) not USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) which is emblazoned with the number 72.
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While it is true that the Houthis targeted two US warships in early November, these attacks were aimed at the USS Stockdale and the USS Spruance. Pentagon press secretary Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder told reporters the vessels shot down the projectiles and were “not damaged and no personnel were hurt”.
On 12 November, the Houthi military spokesman, Yahya al-Sarea, said in a statement on X that the group had “successfully achieved its objectives” concerning an operation to target the “American aircraft carrier (Abraham) located in the Arabian Sea with a number of cruise missiles and drones”.
Major General Ryder said he was “not aware of any attacks” on the USS Abraham Lincoln. The US Navy has reportedly confirmed the aircraft carrier has now left the region after several months of operations and at the time of writing is in the South China Sea.
The Houthis began targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea in the month following the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. (The Red Sea is connected to the Arabian Sea via the Gulf of Aden.)
We’ve written about many examples of footage being falsely connected to these events. We also have a guide to spotting misleading videos online yourself.
You can find more of our work relating to claims in the Middle East on our website.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the footage is from the video game Arma 3 and an unrelated incident on a different ship in 2020. It does not show USS Abraham Lincoln or an attack from Yemen in the Arabian or Red Seas.
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