No, the Philippines has not acquired its first two submarines

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Multiple Facebook accounts have shared a video which claims the Philippines has acquired its first diesel-electric submarines. The video footage is actually of US Navy nuclear-powered submarines. The Philippines Department of Defense told AFP that the country has not acquired any submarines.

The video posted on multiple Facebook accounts (see here and here) starts by stating: “The Philippines acquire its first diesel-electric submarines”.

The caption posted with the video says:

“Proudly the Philippines received two submarine."

The video shows images of a submarine being wheeled out of a shipyard hangar:

A reverse image search shows that this footage is actually of the American nuclear-powered submarine, the USS John Warner, being transferred to a floating dry dock in 2014.

The footage was posted on the Huntington Ingalls YouTube channel in 2014. Huntington Ingalls are an American military ship building company.

Other images used in the Facebook video are of the cruise-missile submarine USS Ohio on a port visit to Malaysia in 2015.

The Department of National Defense (DND) told AFP that the Philippines has not acquired any submarines.

“No, we have not,” DND spokesman Arsenio Andolong told AFP when asked whether the Philippine navy had already acquired submarines.

“We are still conducting doctrinal and market research for the Navy’s submarine acquisition program,” he added in a text message exchange on September 9.

The Facebook posts and video have been shared 18,800 times to Facebook groups -- mainly ones which support Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte -- with over a million followers, according to data from social media monitoring site CrowdTangle.