Naval exercise footage shot in US, not Taiwan
- Published on August 14, 2025 at 11:00
- 3 min read
- By Jan Cuyco, AFP Philippines
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"The army of. US.. Has arrived. in Taiwan," says part of Tagalog-language text overlaid to a Facebook video shared July 30, 2025.
The footage, showing aerial shots of troops disembarking from a ship on a beach, has racked up more than one million views.
"Let's pray for our fellow Filipinos working in Taiwan," says a narrator, adding the US Navy landed in Taiwan amid heightened tensions with China.
The video has also been reshared on TikTok by Filipino users worried about potential conflict in their nearest northern neighbour.
Communist China has never ruled Taiwan but Beijing insists the island is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control (archived link).
While the United States is legally bound to provide arms to Taiwan -- which Beijing opposes -- Washington has long maintained "strategic ambiguity" when it comes to whether it would deploy its military to defend it from a Chinese attack (archived link).
According to retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery in a May 15 Congressional hearing, there are about 500 US military trainers in Taiwan (archived link).
However, the circulating video shows clips from a military exercise on the eastern coast of the United States.
Google reverse image searches found the visuals originally published on the US Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) on July 1, 2025 (archived link).
The DVIDS caption says they depict an amphibious landing during the Atlantic Alliance exercise in Virginia on June 30, 2025.
The Atlantic Alliance exercise is conducted "along the eastern seaboard of the United States" by the US Fleet Forces Command and US Marine Forces Command, it adds.
Clips from the 10-minute video have been mirrored and repurposed in the false posts.
The video of troops landing on the beach corresponds to the 2:42 mark of the DVIDS video.
At the 5:30 mark, the same military vehicle is seen disembarking the ship.
Finally, the aerial video of a huge ship docking on the beach to bring in more military men matches the 6:23 mark of the DVIDS video.
The video compilation also appeared on the US Central Command's official website on June 30, 2025 (archived link).
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation related to Taiwan here.
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