Afghan War Veteran Rates 9 Afghanistan War Battles In Movies | How Real Is It? | Insider

contact L rolling out that door is remarkably stupid you don't go on contact left you go out the other side my name is Eric terashima I'm a retired colonel from the United States Marines I spent 30 years of service and had 12 deployments including eight combat tours and three of those were in Afghanistan today we are going to look at Afghanistan War battles in movies and judge how real they are Landing helicopters in Afghanistan uh was challenging those look to me like a ch47 Chinooks that was frequently used by the Army heavy lift helicopter large troop transporter some of that looks enhanced just for the movie to make it look more dramatic an RPG bringing down a helicopter uh is absolutely realistic but it has to be a a very very lucky shot like you just you hit a vital system particularly in a very dramatic crash like that I would give this clip an eight the the stress and the duress that that I felt coming through the actors uh as well as the scenario that was uh depicted so yeah this was they did a pretty good job being on horses would be beneficial for fighting in Afghanistan because of the uh the mountainous terrain you have to go through a lot of uh elevation changes hiking up hiking down and so horses are going to help you gain more distance more quickly as opposed to wearing yourself out on foot later when I started to go through some uh advisor training this is up in the mountains uh we would have classes on how to pack mules for example and how to butcher animals and have cook them out over an open fire so yeah we we worked on some of those skills hey where the hell do those come from how did do him not know about a supply line lack of intelligence is what he's concerned about like we we should know this uh these are capital pieces of equipment our networks are so strong in the Spy world that they should have had an idea of what was uh up ahead and tanks are kind of a big deal they're loud they travel long distances and everyone should know where all of them are the advantages are mobile armor uh there so the occum are protected and then a big gun that's a big Advantage uh big disadvantage is that they are Road bound and they can only go on certain roads uh which makes them vulnerable uh to mines like IEDs they had tanks they were Soviet era uh tanks that were available and usable by them by the time I showed up the Coalition forces were so strong that there's no way that the enemy could possibly use tanks against us don't want support people standing up in the middle of of a firefight it's like you actually don't do that you want to get down down on the ground right cuz you don't want to get hit I would give it a six for realism this particular clip um on the horses is cool and dramatic and yeah and they're charging downhill uh but some of the individual tactics kind of made me uh laugh a little bit there's no logical reason for Hadi to lead us down this Troth unless he's leading us into a trap you're out of your bounds Amed you're here to translate actually I'm here to interpret that's a really great response interpreting is so much more than translation translation just trying to get the verbatim speech and convey that interpreters are much more than that they become uh cultural advisers uh to the people that they're that they're servicing with and um when you start working closely with uh with your interpreters it what happens is you need to form trust with each other if you don't build that trust then you may be lacking in the ability to get a full interpretation of what's Happening he's saying I'm interpreting a cultural thing right here that I that I I'm seeing I'm seeing how Hadid is acting he's acting weird and I'm sniffing the this guy out he's being a rat and by the way even though your sensors and your patrols and stuff don't see it this is a bad road to go down you do not want to do this he's a traitor in Afghanistan and actually in all cases we do have to vet sources of uh intelligence what you do is you try to confirm or deny information that they give you as things pass along in time and so over time you build up okay how often is he lying to us because you expect that and then how and why that's what a case manager is going to try to do that's how the beding process [Music] goes I kind of call BS on that one if if you're if he's going to draw a weapon the one he's going to do is the rifle that's around his shoulder uh and the reason why you do that is because pistols are wildly inaccurate you've only got this much of a barrel a lot of pistol fights go off you see like 20 rounds fired by each side all misses at this kind of a range in various degrees you always have to kind of diffus tension of some sort is he doing a good job um no if you're trying to deescalate a situation drawing your pistol out is not a deescalation he says they have his family the risk was uh pretty high uh really high and particularly my my last uh deployment was 2019 through 2020 I'm in lash Gara and most of our interpreters were locals from lash Gara they would kind of sneak on and off the base of fortunately we were collocated with an Afghan base so made a that's a very simple lie I'm going to go work on The Afghan base come in and out not knowing they're actually working for the Coalition forces so we've got these locals who are extremely at risk uh like if their pictures get out their names get out then their families get known and their families do get threatened obviously I'm I'm still concerned about the ones who are left behind I still send money uh reg on a regular basis to multiple families out there they need support and I I can't let my friends starve I'd give it a four um mainly because uh the scenario is common enough what I don't like are the tactics person who's trying to deescalate the situation and instead does an escalatory move uh which doesn't make any sense at all so that's why I gave it a four just click it don't change any settings just click it vehicle amb bushes were uh very common in Afghanistan because you're confined to roads that can handle uh that kind of load and because of this kind of terrain it's up in the mountains everything's is canalized you must go through that road that makes it a lot easier to Ambush Vehicles contact contact left means that if I'm here in the driver's seat that means I'm receiving fire from my left hand side yelling contact left and rolling out that door is remarkably stupid you don't go on contact left you go out the other side Stark should have stayed in the vehicle because what usually will happen is as you're forming defenses during an ambush the vehicle actually becomes uh a safe spot that's where your food is that's where your water is that's where your pack is you know your supplies and other things so yeah the vehicle's absolutely Central that does happen sometimes where you'll have a nearby exploding piece of ordinance and next to nothing happens to you uh as opposed to um you could just get like utterly destroyed depending on where you show up in the frag pattern is how that works and this is just dumb luck I think I'd give this one an eight there is going to be a deduction for contact left getting out left although people do do stupid things uh when they're into rest Stark should not have left the vehicle either what he say you give them props uh for not having doors on the Humvees that's that's a good detail it's like that's clearly early early on uh where you were where you were doing stuff like that it would be common to to be in bomb out buildings like that just standing out in the open firing a bunch of rounds not necessarily the smartest thing to do you're looking for cover you're looking for angles like don't stand right next to each other I got you hands up Lucky some hit your plate oh Jesus when that metal hits your plate that's like someone punching you in the chest basically right so all that force velocity and bullet are are hitting you and so you just feel this giant thump the tactics of the the shooting and moving um don't make sense to me I I think that could have been depicted a little bit better so I'm going to give it a six here the film portrays the Battle of cames in 2009 that's an absolutely horrible defensive position to be raid down in the middle of the valley with two steep Cliffs up above you with lots of terrain that you can hide in one of the first things you would do when you occupy a position like this at least I would do is write what's called a fir plan sketch you put down all the places in the terrain that's surrounding you like a a ledge that an enemy can just peek over what you would be able to do with the sketch is from any position in your defensive spot you would know okay that Ridge right there is 200 yards away from me and that makes a difference of where you're going to aim or how you're going to aim and with what weapon system to down to down ah would it be realistic to have a machine gun uh that's ready to go under a tarp absolutely it would be you'd prefer to have um somebody on the machine gun at all times uh at least I I would I would be doing at least one test fire a day just to make sure all my stuff was tight and ready and I would have rounds at the ready any bit of armor in the field helps especially cuz this is a gunfight of yes you want you want your personal protective equipment on ceramic plate that's on your chest and on your back is designed to stop a 762 two round at close range and that kind of thing happened all the time you're running operations 24 hours a day you're going to have to have day sleepers or people who are doing other things people may be working out so there's you go to the bathroom uh you take a shower you're doing all these things and you're 24 hours at risk so yeah when something happens it's normal to see folks in maybe their unlaced boots with with the Flack and helmet on that's all they got and their weapon weather apach are down it'll be two more hours that happens all the time the terrain is is so drastic within Afghanistan like here in this depiction looks like it's kind of Sunny maybe a little bit overcast but it the weather doesn't look all that bad well when mountain range away it could be just like insane weather it could be a crazy thunderstorm wind storm Sandstorm high winds an Apache helicopter is an assault aircraft carries a Gatling gun and it carries uh Rockets it's highly maneuverable it can get in and out of the terrain and sometimes they they already know before they're even coming in what their targets may be looking like cuz they may have gotten a pre-brief it's an extra machine gun and and Rocket Firepower that's highly accurate I'll give it a nine it's really good it's really well done you want to take a look at this what what do you see let me see nice firewatch is a 24-hour man position and it's firat because in the Marines we hearken it back to you had to have a fire and you need keep keep the Embers going if you didn't you were screwed he called it an OP so it's an observation post that's why he's on the binoculars binoculars uh are a whole lot easier to hold up than having a rifle at the ready and they also have a wide wider field of view so if you want to be able to scan large parts of the Horizon binoculars are definitely the way they would be doing that and you got them typically want high up positions uh high up positions uh give you better fields of view they're longer uh you can see more and in some cases like in this particular one you've got a lot of standoff between you and the other folks no no no no no very B very very bur Barry this is kind of a PTSD trigger moment that this guy's going through it's a really intense emotional feeling like you're killing a human being and oh by the way not you killed three and then the guys who are with you are celebrating like giddy celebrating which is for your normal person being that up close and personal to death is bizarre one of the issues for me with PTSD is um I get overly stimul stimulated you do kind of have sometimes these out-of- body experiences where where you're you lose track of like okay this is not really good for everyday people to hear or be a part of it's a selective crowd I'd give it a 10 I think it was a a good uh depiction of ptsc absolutely [Music] absolutely so we call this victim initiated was there a way to detect uh IEDs in the field before them going off yes absolutely so frequently what we would do is a patrol like that would be led by somebody sweeping the ground all in this case for whatever reason they they clearly did not do that see s off so RC is radio controlled kind of like a a mine Ambush because it was a Well well-worn Trail and it was a remote control device of some sort something got a signal so it was an active piece that means down on that IED there needs to be a power source it needs to be a battery that way you got something to close the circuit to detonate the ad the device and uh something that would receive that remote detonation piece how far away does that person need to be well if it's like a garage door opener they got to be kind of close right uh to get that kind of a distance uh if if it's more sophisticated maybe they could be further away that would be a just a basic like a paintbrush same thing that like archaeologists will use you might do that if you're concerned about there being um a trigger so if you're concerned about that then yes you want to be very careful around those initiators on the other hand uh there's been times in war where I've seen people see detonation cord well if you're walking around in an area like that and you see a like a a red wire looking thing that has no business being there that's detonation cord that usually means that somebody has set up a bomb near you and so I've seen guys in the field grab that that detonation cord and just Yank on it uh right and reel in the these bombs hope we good on this um hostile intend what you're talking about is Rules of Engagement right when you can and cannot shoot why you should or should not shoot and uh establishing hostile intent is one of those things how do you determine that in this case to to make it really easy on the viewership it was this guy is putting a bomb in the middle of the road that's clearly designed for us I'm going to give this a uh a nine that's 100% realistic and happened and it was funny cuz she's like hot hot hot hot cuz yeah think about it you just had an explosion happen in this little chunk of metal it's hot when it comes down so this people in a firefight who were just standing up like what are you doing you don't do that in the firefight you get down cuz you don't want to get shot at right you don't want to get hit by a bullet so I'm laughing at that just that the tactics don't make any sense um if someone's shooting at you you're not going to just stand there be like hey yeah I like getting shot at this is cool a javelin is like an anti-tank weapon comes in two different modes there's a direct fire mode and then there's an over the-top mode which I think this depicted the over the toop mode one of the the funny things is that um it requires a certain standoff it's around 150 to 200 M well that truck was not 150 to 200 met away so there's a little bit of of that cinematography that you just got to do for Hollywood stuff uh I get so no points off on that one for realism um I'll give it a three most of the detraction is is just from standing up while shooting uh you would never do that my favorite scene that I watched today was from The Outpost it felt very real to me the duress of the folks being put into a horrible situation doing the best they can with it pretty believable so I liked it from that standpoint and if you like this video why not click on the next one

Channel: Insider

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Keywords: Insider, Movies, TV, Afghanistan, Afghan, Veteran, Eric Bana, Eric Terashima, Taylor Kitsch, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Shannon, Scott Eastwood, Orlando Bloom, Chris Hemsworth, Michael Peña, Jake Gyllenhaal, Amanda Seyfried, Channing Tatum, Margot Robbie, Tina Fey, Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Downey Jr., Bill Hader, Henry Winkler

Id: pvD0H9p7T0I

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2023