While watching the new Amazon series Jack Ryan this weekend, I was struck by an interesting scene in the pilot and immediately sent a text to a retired Coast Guard friend of mine.

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For those of you who haven't caught the series yet, this is regarding a scene in the pilot episode featuring a Coast Guard variant of the popular Sikorsky H-60 helicopter known as the Jayhawk. I've worked with the military before and thought it was interesting that the producers portrayed the CIA using the Coast Guard to pick up an agent whose cover story was a State Department employee from a public event.

I did what any curious producer would do in determining the authenticity of a scene, and called upon my friend, retired Coast Guard CAPT John Pruitt, former director of the Coast Guard Motion Picture & TV Office (MOPIC).

His response proved interesting, and we ended up discussing much more regarding the intersection of Hollywood and the Military that we decided should be shared with our respective followers.

My initial thought was that sending a readily identifiable federal asset to pick up a civilian analyst seemed excessive, and that a civilian executive helo with men in suits would be less obtrusive, but apparently what's weird about seeing federal assets here in Hollywood is commonplace in DC and the connotation of a slick 'black helicopter' is actually more ominous due to the restrictions on civilian aircraft in the National Capital Region (NCR).

CAPT Pruitt said, "The Coast Guard is innocuous to the uninformed." He mentions that it's not common practice, but it could happen. While there are a number of DoD airlift assets available in the NCR, it's the Coast Guard that is tasked with the mission of intercepting violators to the Special Flight Rules Area due to its Title 14 authority as a federal law enforcement agency and exemption from posse comitatus. That authority gives them the jurisdiction to engage civilian general aviation pilots who fail to heed instructions that Air Force or other DoD units cannot use to otherwise compel pilots to adhere to the restrictions short of blowing them out of the sky. The USCG is also one of the most readily available federal aviation assets available in the NCR for a sister organization to call in a favor should other federal units providing non-presidential VIP transportation be unable to fulfill the request.

The necessity of getting a permit to fly a civilian helicopter on short notice in the NCR makes it difficult to explain why a plain black helicopter would be picking up a State Department employee, while also creating a paper trail by requisitioning a civilian contractor that the CIA who would probably prefer to keep off the books. Additionally, with a cover story as a 'supply chain logistician' for the State Department, it's easier to explain that Ryan had been called in to deal with a maritime issue with the Coast Guard than being picked up by a black helicopter more commonly associated with special ops.

As we continued our discussion, we jumped forward to Episode 3, "Black 22". Without getting into spoilers, this is the first episode where we see any real interaction with the Department of Defense. Although the USCG is part of the military, they're under the Department of Homeland Security, which also explains why the producers were able to use Coast Guard assets in the pilot without necessarily having DoD approval.

If you've seen this episode and understand how the DoD's relationship with Hollywood works, you will understand why the DoD did not support this project. There's a particular scene at the beginning of the episode establishing their being at Creech AFB, however without DoD approval, the producers did not have access to the actual base and as you can see below, fabricated a sign to indicate where they were.

Ask five different studio lawyers, and they will give you five different answers as to when or whether or not one can film a logo for broadcast that would make for the subject of an entirely different post, however it seems that the lawyers at Amazon decided in this instance, because they did not have DoD approval, they would change the logo to remove any implication that the USAF approved of the depiction of the Airmen in the episode. This caused some discussion among some of our mutual friends in the military and formed the basis of our next topic.

The quasi-contractor black site combat scenes in Episode 2 looked beliveable enough, but several military friends commented that the greeked Air Force logo took them out of scene and brought them crashing to reality. This is often a common complaint by veterans and active military, or individuals of any profession when a character in a film or TV is supposed to be in the military, a doctor, or a pipefitter, and it's apparent they don't know anything about the profession they're portraying. With the military, it's usually poor grooming standards, wrong medals, or other common protocol errors, just as doctors complain about operating procedures or pipefitters about characters showing up with the wrong tools.

It's not that Hollywood doesn't care. Showrunner Graham Roland served in the Marines himself and is committed to accurate depictions of the military, but just like the federal government, there are many moving pieces so sometimes things gets overlooked. Often, as in this instance, it's legal that weighs in and overrules using the actual logo/award/badge for fear of lawsuit, others it's a decision made on the fly by a support organization. There have been a couple instances in my experience where the technical advisor on a show was asked about something that wasn't their specialty, and gave erroneous information that was typical for his specialty, but that the specialty in question had special operational conditions that did not follow standard protocol. Another instance was that a stock image was being used to establish a shot that was cheated elsewhere, and a young executive placed in charge of finding the stock images mistook an LHA for a scene that called for a Nimitz-class carrier. Those that have no idea what the differences of the two types of ships are were none the wiser (including the exec), but for those in the sea services, it was a glaring mistake.

For a show that caters to a military demographic, such an error can adversely affect its credibility, however, for a comedy or show that rarely deals with such subject matter, it can be easily overlooked. For those in the entertainment industry following this post, it's important that you weigh the issue of accuracy carefully to insure you're not putting off a significant portion of your demographic.

Jack Ryan deals in the gray area not necessarily condoned by the Department of Defense, so they can get away by using military contractors and black sites instead of actual military assets, and had the luxury of eschewing DoD cooperation in favor of content. Where they lacked access to DoD assets, they made up in securing plausible locations, filming in D.C. and Paris, and using Morocco to cheat for Yemen, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.

Roland told fans at Comic-Con this year that "Everyone involved with the project recognized that if we were going to do a Tom Clancy Jack Ryan franchise and follow the five movies that had come before and all the great books, that we had to actually go to the places. We couldn't cheat the audience." This was also to their advantage in getting around the lack of DoD support, as I mentioned in previous posts, there can be alternatives to finding military hardware overseas if you have the resources.

Stay tuned for our follow up our discussion on some of the scenes presented in Operation Finale that might seem counter-intuitive, but make sense from a international relations point of view.

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