FACT CHECK: Viral Footage Does Not Show Israel’s Iron Beam Air Defense Laser in Action | VOA News

FACT CHECK: Viral Footage Does Not Show Israel’s Iron Beam Air Defense Laser in Action

Amid the Hamas-Israel escalation, videos claiming to show Israel’s new Iron Beam directed-energy weapon air defense system in action have become viral across various social media platforms.

One such video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, shows footage from a video game called Arma 3. Still, it had received some 30K likes and reposts and 5.7 million views at the time of this writing.

Another video circulating on X, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube appears to show Tel Aviv-bound rockets being intercepted.

Jenya zub LIVE NEWS, a Telegram channel with nearly 36,000 subscribers that posts in Russian and Ukrainian, wrote that the video showed Iron Beam in use.

“Preliminarily, the video shows the work of the newest Israeli laser air defense system ‘Iron Beam.’ The laser shoots down aerial targets. Air defense of the future,” Jenya zub LIVE NEWS posted on October 15.

That is false.

Some social media users noted a diagonal beam of light that flashed across the screen at the time of interception. The beam appeared to cut through two points of light in the sky