Viral Iran conflict footage is actually just gameplay from War Thunder

Whether it be from official government sources or through citizens caught up in the conflict, there's been plenty of footage circulating online of the events happening in the Middle East following the US and Israel's military action against Iran. The White House even recently published a video montage of air strikes and warship sinkings, bizarrely laced with references to the Call of Duty games. However, one widely circulated piece of footage, which posters claim shows an American ship taking down an Iranian fighter jet, has been debunked. Was it footage from another conflict dishonestly reused? No. Was it AI-generated? Nope. It appears it was simply gameplay from War Thunder.

Despite plenty of War Thunder players pointing it out, and community notes getting brandished on X, posts such as this one (which, at the time of writing, has earned 7.3 million views since its posting on March 1) claim to show a smoking US ship firing on an Iranian jet. After being hit, the jet bursts into flames and crashes into the water below. However, on closer inspection, both the ship and the plane appear to be very dated, and the more you study it, the less it looks and sounds like real-life recorded footage.

An Iranian plane VS a US ship.

I can watch this all day 😂 pic.twitter.com/qjLH2rA8V1

- Joel Fischer 🇺🇸 (@realJoelFischer) March 1, 2026

A new Fact Check article from Agence France-Presse has now collated all the evidence that points towards this being gameplay from a battle in War Thunder. One of the biggest free PC games around, it features vehicles from across the 20th and 21st centuries, which would explain the fact that the warship and the fighter plane look older than you'd expect from present day military equipment.

AFP's analysis, which is supported by the claims of many War Thunder players online, is that the ship in the footage is actually the USS Tennessee - a United States dreadnought built in the 1910s, that served in World War 2, and was decommissioned in 1947, almost eighty years ago. As for the 'Iranian fighter plane,' well that looks to be a Messerschmitt Me 163B-1a Komet, used by Nazi Germany in WWII.

And if you still aren't confident that this is War Thunder and not real-life reportage, even the game's creators believe it to be so. "Yes, this looks like War Thunder footage," Konstantin Govorun, Gaijin Entertainment's head of public relations, says to AFP.

This is by no means the first time videogame footage has been circulated (either intentionally or unintentionally) as actual footage of real world wars. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some subsequent clips claiming to show moments from the conflict were in fact from modded Arma 3 matches.

While this latest incident is certainly a commendation of War Thunder's visuals, it's yet another reminder as to how misinformation can spread quickly on social media, and how little care people will take before sharing such posts. AFP reports that this very footage of the 'US ship shooting down an Iranian plane' was "briefly amplified by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a since-deleted post."