Official American accounts marked the service’s 250th birthday by showcasing foreign vessels
The 250th anniversary of the United States Navy has been marred by a series of online gaffes after officials and organizations mistakenly posted images of warships belonging to other nations, including Russia.
The Navy SEAL Museum in San Diego and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes were among those to share the mistaken tributes to mark the anniversary on Monday.
Some of the posts, which remained online for hours before being removed, were compiled by Wall Street Journal reporter Dave Brown in what he jokingly dubbed a “Hunt for Reds in October.”
Many of the photos hailed as symbols of US naval might in fact showed Soviet or Russian vessels, including the Slava-class cruiser Marshal Ustinov and the Sverdlov-class cruiser Mikhail Kutuzov – preserved as a museum ship in Novorossiysk since 2002. Others featured Danish, Japanese, and Indian ships, as well as apparent AI-generated images.
Mistaken use of foreign or digitally fabricated military imagery has become increasingly [See below - Ed.]common in official posts, particularly with the rise of social media and generative AI tools. Critics say such blunders highlight a growing lack of professionalism in public communications.
Thanks, comrades! US SOUTHCOM amuses Twitter followers with pic celebrating US Air Force birthday featuring RUSSIAN warplanes
The official Twitter account of US Southern Command is facing mockery after it posted a picture featuring silhouettes of Russian Sukhoi fighter jets to mark the US Air Force’s birthday.
The simple graphics, posted [Post taken down. ~ Ed.] on the occasion of the 74th birthday of the USAF, featured three top-down views of warplanes. The silhouettes don’t feature much detail, but their tail sections strongly implied that the aircraft are not from the fleet normally deployed by the American armed forces. Instead, they strongly resemble Sukhoi Su-27 twin-jet fighters.
The apparent gaffe was met with a strong reaction on social media that leaned heavily towards mockery. One user suggested a simple fix to the image, replacing the silhouettes with those of F-22 Raptors. Another said he “chooses to believe” that the aircraft in the picture were actually the Raptor’s less-successful competitor in the Advanced Tactical Fighter, proposed by Rockwell.
SOUTHCOM’s tribute to the USAF was not the only one that raised eyebrows this year. One of the accounts associated with anti-jihadist Operation Inherent Resolve sent its best wishes to the air force with a photo of two Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, which [are] operated by the US Navy.
Communications specialists on the US civilian side have occasionally fallen into the same trap. In April, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith congratulated the US Air Force Reserve Command with an image featuring Russian Su-34 jets.
And in 2019, Congressman Brian Mast wished the US Navy happy birthday with a picture of the Russian Navy’s Kirov-class missile cruiser ‘Pyotr Veliky’.
