Ok...so I'm going to spill some beans. My team was involved in shooting some of the scenes for Act of Valor. I was an NSW Armorer for SBT-22 at the times of filming. So there is no confusion, I am not a SWCC or SEAL, I am an Armorer. I was not in any scenes, I was on the side-lines doing ordinance and maintenance tasks and checking out the weapons Bandito Bro's weapons guys brought down. Our guys had a blast working with the Bandito Bro's team, and I'm a little disappointed they didn't get more face-time. They got included in some making-of stuff it seems and of course they got face-time as a unit. I want to share some stuff about my experiences regarding filming.
When my team as a whole was involved with Act of Valor, we did stuff nearly 3 years ago. The film crews came and went and I never heard a peep about the status of the movie. I got word they retitled the film to Act of Valor (Can't recall the original title now). Our team had worked with them in the past doing some SWCC recruiting material and they did a phenomenal job with that. The guys loved it. There were a set of shorter videos they did in addition to the main recruiting video and those were pretty good in their own right but I'm too lazy to hunt them down.
***Warning, Scene Spoilers Follow***
The primary scene involving SBT-22 was in the beginning when the boats were sling-loaded in on CH-47's and in the exfiltration when they swoop in to save the day and bullet-hose the bad-guys. The guys train for that routinely and usually come back pretty pumped that it was cool, but that the rotor-wash and mist is like standing in a pressure-washer stream and that part sucks. The majority of that scene was shot at Special Boat Team 22's home-turf on Stennis Space Center, MS and utilizing the adjacent training area and the Pearl River. It appeared to me they switched back and forth with a little footage from Fort Knox, Kentucky and the Salt River there.
I got excited the moment I saw the Bronco appear and give chase. Let me tell you, I saw this Bronco getting loaded up with pyro for the scene and the guy's were chomping at the bit to hose it down with the Mk 44 7.62mm 'mini-gun's' and M240's. Was it live fire? Yes...and No. See, our training area doesn't allow for live, full-power M2HB .50cal fire (They're working on getting permissions still). That's why they rigged some pyro, they had to simulate the truck being hit with the .50's, which were actually shooting blank's instead of the usual Mk211 ammo used in real-world missions. The pyro rigging added cool movie effect too ;) but all the 7.62mm impact was real. Sort of.
What was used is known as 7.62 SRTA (Short-Range Training Ammunition). The bullets are blue, frangible, and triangular in shape. The purpose of it is to allow for training in places where the full-power range of regular 7.62x51mm poses a risk and reduced range ammunition may be suitable for use instead. The round is designed to maintain power and accuracy out to say 100m in my opinion and then destabilize and tumble, thereby losing lethality and letting gravity sink it to the ground ending it's flight. The bullet is shaped with a 3 counter-rifling grooves. The bullet comes out at a right-hand twist but the aerodynamics of the grooves want it to turn left, and this is what reduces its range and power. Will it kill you? Hell yes! Will it go through a Bronco at 50m? Hell yes! At 200m? Barely likely to scratch the paint, but I wouldn't volunteer to play catch. The ending scene of the Bronco shows it literally turned to melting swiss-cheese, and that was the real devastation and carnage from the team's coordinated fires.
You do not want to be a bad-guy up against the SOC-R (Special Operations Craft-Riverine). To give you a low-down of the firepower they can bring to bear, let me list the armament. The teams breakdown into groups. Typical scenarios involve either 2 or 4 boats acting in supporting roles. The boat has 5 machine-gun mounts, 2 forward, 2 mid-section, and 1 aft. Armament is as follows:
- Mk 44 7.62mm miniguns firing 3000 rpm. Either 1 or 2 fwd mounted.
- M240 Dual Mount (Mk99 mount) mounted opposite the minigun fwd.
- M240 7.62 machine guns mid-section left and right side (600-650rpm)
- M2HB .50cal machine gun aft mounted (440-600rpm)
So anyway, it looked like both SBT-20 and SBT-12 (Their mission's and craft differ from 22's) got a little time in the movie as well, but I am extremely proud of SBT-22 and the work done for Act of Valor as a whole. The movie was entertaining, and though fiction, they got a lot of it right. They used or featured real tech, like the RQ-11 Raven which SBT-22 does employ. They did hollywood some things like the Raven's video-feed, or a scene where an operator is surveilling an airstrip and his Steiner's 10x50's that have an electronic-looking view, but that's minor and not distracting. I strongly encourage you all to go and see it, and remember what our guys go through to get it done. The losses are real, people sacrifice it all, and crazy shit happens. They included a little nod to some real events. Michael Monsoor jumping on a grenade, and his funeral come to mind. A guy taking an RPG to the chest and living...
Go see the movie. It's enjoyable. Support our guys. One thing that made me proud was that they didn't roll credits, they rolled the names of Naval Special Warfare's fallen, and not one person stood up and left until it was finished rolling.
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