Claim: A video of a Pakistani fighter jet taking off is evidence that decisive military action against the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has started in Pakistan.
Fact: The video is from 2023 and is a simulation of an F-16 fighter jet. It has no links to the Pakistan Army taking action against the BLA.
On 22 May 2025, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video of what appeared to be a fighter jet taking off from a runway. The post’s Urdu caption read as follows:
بی ایل اے کے خلاف فیصلہ کن کاروائی کا آغاز ہو گیا ۔۔🚨🚨”
“🇵🇰فیلڈ مارشل پاکستان زندہ باد
The caption reads as follows in English:
“Decisive action against BLA has started.
Long live Field Marshal Pakistan”
The second line of the caption is a reference to Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir who was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal on 22 May 2025. Munir continues to hold the position of Chief of Army Staff as well.
Fact or Fiction?
Analyzing the video, we noticed that a purple banner popped up at 0:18 that said “DCS WORLD PAK”. Below the banner, the words “Like & Subscribe” are also visible. Later, at 0:24, a logo for DCS WORLD PAK also appears as shown below:
We started off by conducting a reverse-image search of the video’s keyframes to see if it actually showed evidence of the Pakistan Army recently initiating a military operation against the BLA. The results led us to an exact match of the video on YouTube dated 11 June 2023. The video, titled “PAF F-16 ADF Night Scramble | DCS #shorts”, was posted by a channel called DCS WORLD PAK (the same name that appears at the end of the video in the claim). The channel’s page also carries the same logo which appears at the end of the video in the claim:
According to the page’s description, it is a flight simulator channel. The bio states:
“An Urdu and English language channel representing the Pakistani Flight Simulator Community in general and Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) Community in particular, globally. We aim to provide the most authentic technical information available in public domain on everything involving aviation using simulation and digital sources.”
The page posts flight simulator videos for various types of aircrafts, as is seen here, here, and here. Hence, the video in the claim is a simulation for the F-16 fighter jet, originally shared in June 2023. Moreover, there is no indication in its title or description that links it to the BLA or the Pakistan Army launching action against the proscribed militant group.
We also conducted Google searches for “Anti-BLA operation”, “Decisive operation against BLA”, and “Pak military operation BLA” to see if the Pakistani government had announced any military operation against the BLA. This led us to news reports from November 2024 by The Express Tribune, Associated Press, and Al Jazeera that stated Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif had approved a “comprehensive military operation” in Balochistan against terrorist groups such as the BLA. This announcement came in the wake of a suicide bombing in Quetta on 9 November 2024, for which the BLA claimed responsibility.
We also came across more recent reports from The Nation, The Express Tribune, and Pakistan Today dated 22 May 2025 that claimed Sharif and Munir had vowed to eradicate the scourge of foreign-sponsored terrorism. This was seen in a statement made by the Government of Pakistan’s X account on 21 May 2025 in the wake of the suicide bombing in Khuzdar district, Quetta, on the same date. In the statement, Pakistan accused “India’s state-sponsored proxies (Fitna Al Hindustan)” of carrying out the attack.
Virality
On X, the claim was shared here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the claim was shared here.
Conclusion: The video in the claim is a simulation of the F-16 fighter jet from 2023, and it is not related to the launch of any military operation against the BLA by the Pakistan Army.
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Background image in cover photo: News Arena India
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