Viral video of Indian warplanes striking targets in Pakistan was from a video game

Multiple Facebook posts share a video that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times which they claim shows an airstrike by Indian fighter jets in Pakistan. The claim is false; the footage is actually from a military simulation video game.

The posts, for example, this one which was posted February 26, 2019, and has been viewed more than 13,000 times, contain black and white footage filmed through a target scope which shows people running from a building before it is hit by a rocket and explodes.

“Indian Air Force attacks Pakistan and kills about 250 terrorists. Historic! #SurgicalStrike Over 245 terrorist eliminated in IAF attack,” the post’s caption says.

India had claimed to have demolished an alleged terrorist camp as it violated Pakistan’s Line of Control (LoC) on February 26 in retaliation for a suicide attack in Indian occupied Kashmir on February 14 which left more than 40 Indian soldiers dead.

Indian aircraft had intruded Pakistani airspace and were forced to return owing to the timely response of the Pakistan Air Force. However, Indian leaders claimed to have hit an alleged terrorist camp and caused heavy casualties.

Pakistan rejected the Indian claims as did locals in the area and said Indian jets were forced to return owing to the timely response of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).

“Indian aircraft intrusion across LoC in Muzafarabad Sector within AJK was 3-4 miles. Under forced hasty withdrawal aircraft released payload which had free fall in open area. No infrastructure got hit, no casualties. Technical details and other important information to follow,” director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) wrote on Twitter.

Earlier, Major General Ghafoor had said, the Indian aircraft “released payload in haste while escaping which fell near Balakot”.

Maj Gen Ghafoor tweeted images of the “payload of hastily escaping Indian aircraft” which “fell in [the] open”.

Here is an AFP story on the February 26 incident.

The misleading video has been shared repeatedly on Facebook and has been viewed more than 400,000 times since it was posted on February 26, 2019.

A reverse image search using keyframes from the misleading video found that the footage is actually from a military simulation video game called Arma 2.

The original footage was uploaded to a YouTube gaming channel called Double Doppler on July 9, 2015 with a title: ‘Really Short Engagement (ft. Taliban) – Apache Gunner FLIR Cam #6 – Arma 2’

Below is the original footage:

The caption of the video on YouTube says: “ Gunner perspective in the US Army Apache during battle, using FLIR camera with M230 sound mod. Like real life. Become part of the CREW – share, comment & subscribe!”

The misleading footage can be seen in the original video from 23 seconds onwards.

Below is a screenshot of the footage used in the misleading post (left) alongside the original footage (right) from the video game: