VERA Files
Three old photos of the United Kingdom’s (U.K.) carrier strike group were posted on a Facebook (FB) page with the claim that the naval formation was recently deployed to the South China Sea. This is old news.
Published on June 15, the two posts carrying the photos bore this caption:
“The Most Powerful UK Carrier Strike Group Assembled in the South China Sea water”
This is misleading. It was in 2021 that the U.K. government deployed the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in the South China Sea as part of a carrier strike group. The exercise aimed to boost the presence of the U.K. government in the Indo-Pacific region.
As of June 2, the U.K. Defense Journal reported that the HMS Queen Elizabeth is undergoing extended repairs at a dry dock port in Rosyth, Scotland.
Reverse image search results and image metadata show that the photos used in the post were captured on Oct. 4, 2020, as part of the carrier strike group’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s Group Exercise 2020.
The carrier strike group, comprising of nine ships, 15 fighter jets, 11 helicopters and 3,000 personnel from the UK, US and the Netherlands, carried out exercises in the North Sea.
The two misleading posts from FB page Military Reborn garnered 1,475 reactions, 469 comments, and 68 shares. These appeared the same day the Chinese Coast Guard implemented a regulation on the detention of foreigners in the disputed South China Sea.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
