Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms. It was claimed along with the video that the Pakistan Air Force had shot down a US Air Force’s F-35A Stealth fighter with a Chinese JF-17 Ladaku Taiyara at Albuquerque International, New Mexico.
During the investigation, we found that the video is at least one year old.
Claim:
X user IDU shared the video with a false claim.
Other users are also sharing the same video with a similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the viral video.
We found the screengrab in several news reports uploaded on May 29, 2024.
The reports said: A pilot was seriously injured after ejecting from an F-35 fighter jet, which crashed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, On Tuesday, CBS News quoted two officials of the US Department of Defence as saying that the aircraft was a developmental model of the $135 million jet, which was en route to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, more than 1,100 kilometres away from Albuquerque. Local outlet KOB4 said the crash took place around 1.50 pm (local time) after refuelling at Kirtland Air Force Base.
We also found the video uploaded on the YouTube channel of Storyful a year ago.
We also found the video on The Telegraph.
This video was also uploaded on several X handles.
Conclusion: 2024 video of plane crash of F-35 fighter jet in New Mexico, now shared as recent with false claims of Pakistan Air Force shooting down the US fighter jet with Chinese JF-17. The viral claim is false.
