Is this real footage of an American F-15 fighter jet being shot down by Iran? No, that's not true: The clip appears to come from a military simulation video game, and the same video was posted online about a month before the reported shootdown of a U.S. F-15 in Iran in early April 2026. An online AI detection tool estimated it is 88.5% likely to be AI-generated.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) by the @GBX_Press account on X on April 3, 2026. It read:
🚨‼️ BREAKING 💥
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) announce the downing of an American F-15 fighter jet on Qeshm Island.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @GBX_Press on X.)
You can watch the video here:
🚨‼️ BREAKING 💥
-- GBX (@GBX_Press) April 3, 2026
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) announce the downing of an American F-15 fighter jet on Qeshm Island. pic.twitter.com/Uvf71IlXrj
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here), there were numerous reliable reports of an American F-15 being shot down in Iran on April 3, 2026, but none of those reports matched or referenced this specific video. Lead Stories found a Facebook Reel (archived here) of the same video from March 5, 2026, about a month earlier.
Video analysis
Although the graphics look realistic, this footage appears to come from a military simulation video game, possibly Arma 3 or Digital Combat Simulator (DCS World). These games are often used to create highly convincing military simulation videos that can be mistaken for real combat footage on social media. Visual cues -- such as the stylized missile trails, explosion effects, and digitally simulated camera shake and zoom -- are consistent with game-engine rendering rather than real-world footage.
Lead Stories ran the video through the Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool. It concluded the clip was 88.5% "likely to be AI-generated":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Additionally, the video shows an F/A-18, not an F-15 fighter jet. The planes are similar, but the F-15 tail fins point straight up while the F/A-18's tail fins are angled out. You can see them below:
(Image source: U.S. Air Force.)
