Does a picture show the Houthis striking the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower with a missile in June 2024? No, that's not true: The image used to substantiate the claim was pulled from the video game Arma 3. Additionally, such an attack has not occurred at the time of writing.
The claim appeared in a post on X, formerly Twitter, (archived here) on June 1, 2024. The post, which included a blurry image that looked like a ship being blown up, read:
Houthi's Hit the Eisenhower with a Hypersonic Missile after British Bombing Kills 16 https://theinteldrop.org/2024/06/01/houthis-hit-the-eisenhower-with-a-hypersonic-missile-after-british-bombing-kills-16/
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jun 4 15:25:37 2024 UTC)
The image
The link included in the post on X led users to a post from The Intel Drop published on June 1, 2024, that acknowledged that the screenshot seemed to originate from a "(PROBABLE FAKE VIDEO)" (archived here).
In an attempt to find the image's source, Lead Stories performed a reverse image search using Google. We found the image on a page that is listed as being published on January 11, 2024 (archived here). The page claims to show "the Yemeni naval forces target[ing] an American destroyer in the Red Sea" and shows the video where the image was pulled from. The watermarks included in the video read "Arabic Journal," so we searched for the watermark using the reverse image search Google feature. It led us to a YouTube page whose URL included the channel name "Arabic Journal"; however, the channel could not be found at the time of writing (archived here). The Wayback Machine contains captures of the homepage of "Arabic Journal," but we did not see any videos or images matching the image used in the claim on those archived pages.
Lead Stories performed additional reverse image searches using Google of screenshots from the video (see here, here and here). The first image linked back to a YouTube video titled "Missile and drone attacks on warships in the Red Sea - YouTube" but the video was taken down from YouTube at the time of writing (archived here). We could not locate an archived version of the YouTube video. The second and third images led back to posts made on X in January 2024, but those posts did not provide any clues about the images' origins.
Arma 3 image
Despite not finding the source of the image included in the post making the claim, Lead Stories determined that the image was a screenshot from a video of Arma 3 gameplay.
The silhouette of the ship in the image does not match that of the Eisenhower, as shown in actual images of the Eisenhower collected by Google. Additionally, the image is blurry, the scene depicted takes place in the dark, and the details of the image do not look very natural. These image and video features are commonplace in misinformation utilizing Arma 3 gameplay, as noted by the developers of Arma 3 in a resource (archived here).
Finally, a major clue was located in a post (archived here) made on X on June 1, 2024, that responded to the post making the claim. The user who made the response post included an image of a ship that featured the same ship number as the ship in the image making the claim, "021," and stated:
dude that is literally a Corvette from Arma 3
Lead Stories found a discontinued Arma 3 ship mod that looks similar to the one shown in the response post (archived here). A screenshot of the mod is below:
(Source: Steam screenshot taken on Tue Jun 4 18:45:40 2024 UTC)
Military response
In an email sent to Lead Stories by the Department of Defense on June 4, 2024, the department refuted the claim:
100% fake news. The USS E has not been attacked.
The official Facebook and X accounts of the Eisenhower did not indicate that the ship was struck by Houthi missiles so far in June 2024.
Other fact checks
At the time this was written, the UK Defence Journal had reviewed a similar claim.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to Arma 3 can be found here.
