A Facebook (FB) Reels video claimed that the United States (U.S.) has deployed its Navy warships and planes to guard the West Philippine Sea. This is false.
Shown in the video is the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group taking part in the Valiant Shield 2020 naval exercise held in the Philippine Sea near Guam and the Mariana Islands Range Complex.
The claim, which has been debunked by other fact-checking groups, re-emerged in early July in a video with this text: “U.S. Navy nasa West ??? Nagbabantay para sa Pilipinas (U.S. Navy in the West [Philippine Sea] guarding for the Philippines).”
“These [videos] appear to be from VALIANT SHIELD 2020,” Cmdr. Matthew Comer, Chief of Media and Current Operations at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Public Affairs, told VERA Files Fact Check via email on Aug. 20.
A cursory search in the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service – a website affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense – yielded photos that showed aircraft formations similar to those seen in the misleading video.
View the comparisons between the misleading video and the photos from the military exercise:
Note: Click the underlined text or the boxes to know more about the aircraft.
Agence-France Presse Manila and Taiwan Fact Check Center reached the same conclusion about the video.
Identical copies of the misleading FB Reel were previously used to falsely claim that fighter jets escorted then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her 2022 visit to Taiwan. Fact checking organizations La Republica in Peru, India Today, and MyGoPen in Taiwan debunked this.
It re-appeared in local posts last July 2 after the Philippines and China agreed to ease tensions in the South China Sea.
Two Facebook netizens reposted the misleading video, garnering a total of over 55,100 reactions, 1,367 comments, and 3,285 shares.
The video gained traction after two Chinese planes dropped flares along the path of a Philippine aircraft in Scarborough Shoal earlier this month.
