This video of MiG landing on a dam is a simulation, not a real one - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 13, 2021
A video accompanying a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that it shows the beautiful landing of MiG Aircraft on a Dam. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a real MIG Aircraft landing on a dam.
Fact: This is a simulation video created with the help of Digital Combat Simulator World. DCS World is a simulation game developed by Eagle Dynamics. MiG is a family of military fighter aircrafts designed by a Russian company. MiG-21 is India’s longest-serving fighter plane which is planned to be phased out because of several accidents over the years. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, the same video was found on YouTube. The YouTube channel is named ‘cptVLK’ and the video was published on 17 October 2020 with the title, ‘MiG 29 landing on the dam 😉 DCS’. In the comments section below the video, one of the users asked ‘Which video game? I will recommend to my nephew’. The channel replied saying ‘DCS World here is the link for download…’.
DCS World is a simulation game developed by Eagle Dynamics which is a software development company established in 1991. According to its Facebook page, ‘Digital Combat Simulator World (DCS World) is a free-to-play digital battlefield game whose dream is to offer the most authentic and realistic simulation of military aircraft, tanks, and ships possible. Simulation videos of some other aircrafts can be seen in their YouTube channel named Eagle Dynamics: Digital Combat Simulator.
Noted Defence journalist Shiv Aroor tweeted a reply saying that the video clearly was a simulation and that he was told that it is from Digital Combat Simulator World. Shiv Aroor is a Senior Editor at India Today and Founder of Livefist which is a website on Indian Defence, Aerospace, and Military Affairs.
Bhai come on 🤣 clearly a simulation. I’m told from Digital Combat Simulator World
It is clear from the video that it’s not a real landing. A parachute can be seen on the backside of the aircraft from 0.30 timestamp of the video, and this suddenly disappears at 0.53.
‘MiG is any member of a family of Soviet military fighter aircraft produced by a design bureau founded in 1939 by Artem Mikoyan (M) and Mikhail Gurevich (G). (The ‘i’ in MiG is the Russian word meaning “and”)’ according to this article. The Indian Air Force website lists MiG 21 and MiG 29 in the fighter aircrafts section.  The Indian Air Force got its longest-serving fighter plane MiG-21 in 1963 and it inducted 874 variants subsequently. However, they have been involved in several accidents over the years and India is planning to phase them out and induct Rafales by 2022.
To sum it up, this video of MiG landing on a dam is a simulation, not a real one.