Looks like a Decepticon to me. (Photo by Master Sgt. Russell E Cooley IV)
Start with a CV-22 Osprey. Throw in an experienced combat controller. Lots of stuff goes bang.
A JSOC mission into Pakistan? Nah. Try the latest edition of Transformers.
The folks at AFSOC helped make “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” even more action-packed than a usual Michael Bay flick. And people appear to hoover up the action; the movie opened with a $116.4 million showing over the holiday weekend.
About 50 airmen from headquarters AFSOC, the 1st Special Operations Wing and other units helped with the filming at Hurlburt Field, Fla., last September. Shooting also took place at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. (Parts of the flick were also filmed on Freedom Plaza in downtown DC, but that probably only interests you if you’re assigned to that five-sided black hole on the Potomac.)
Bay’s crews were allowed to film a CV-22 in flight over the Gulf of Mexico and over the Florida panhandle. They also provided a bit of technical guidance to help develop one character, a retired chief master sergeant who was a combat controller.
How does one manage to get the Air Force — remember, folks, this is a fiscally constrained environment — to devote the time, equipment and manpower to the blockbuster hit? The Pentagon signed off on the use of a CV-22 for filming “because it offered the unique opportunity to highlight Air Force capabilities and showcase airmen to a worldwide audience,” the service’s top PR man in Hollywood said in a release.
