Are demilitarizED military tanks and APCs unarmoured?

[Broomstick]

There are also times when the actual US military gets involved in a movie production, and one of the things they do is to operate actual military equipment used in such a production.

[Isolder74]

There are also times when the actual US military gets involved in a movie production, and one of the things they do is to operate actual military equipment used in such a production.

Yes, Tora, Tora, Tora! is a good example. They not only used the real locations military personnel manned the navy ships and sets helping improve the real look of the attack scenes.

[Ralin]

There are also times when the actual US military gets involved in a movie production, and one of the things they do is to operate actual military equipment used in such a production.

Supposedly they tried to do this with Independence Day and whichever military people the filmmakers were dealing with reviewed the script and said they liked it and would be happy to lend advice and support so long as they did one thing.

Remove all references to Area 51.

The filmmakers refused and that cost them any involvement from the US military.

[Elheru Aran]

Military got back into the game for Resurgence though, IIRC.

But yes, if there's combat action involving vehicles, an easy way to do it is to phone up the nearest base and ask who you have to talk to. The only serious roadblock is usually script approval-- for obvious reasons they won't be happy if your movie makes the military look bad. Or something silly like the Area 51 thing from ID4. But they're happy even with dumb movies, they were a big part of Transformers 2...

[Broomstick]

The aircraft carrier Enterprise first appeared in film in 1968 in Yours, Mine, and Ours according to Wikipedia.

It was also part of Top Gun - the flight operations you see in that film are actual flight operations by military personnel on the carrier. The USS Ranger doubled for the Enterprise for some of the interior scenes in that movie.

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the Navy lent the use of the USS Ranger for filming, as the Enterprise was on an extended voyage and unavailable for use in filming, but probably would have been used if it had been available. As noted, the USS Ranger had previously stood in for the Enterprise.

Basically, the US military is open to working with media productions, especially those showing the military in a positive light. Such joint ventures go back to at least WWII. Even when military and hardware do not appear on screen the US military is usually willing to consult with producers and directors. Likewise, Hollywood has long participated in making training films and such for the military.

It's rather like the stadium fly-bys by the Air Force or Navy - just about any event can request a fly-by for a particular time, date, and location. The military will incorporate it into whatever other training or missions are being flown that particular day. "OK, folks, you need to fly from point A to point B and do this, this and this and, by the way, overfly this location at your assigned altitude at this exact time." So you can wind up with little po-dunk county fairs requesting a low-level pass of the most sophisticated and super-secret aircraft in the world, and even getting it. (Of course, the military can't always grant such requests, but the effort is made to accommodate as many as possible.)

It's PR, it's propaganda, it's a recruiting tool, and it's also the notion that the military serves the nation. Also, a little fun and fantasy is good for troop morale. Frankly, most real military types I know would much prefer a world where the military is mainly used for parades, fly-bys, and movies than actual shooting wars. Like firemen, they prepare for a job that really we prefer there be no need for.

[Elheru Aran]

So as far as movie productions go, there's pretty much nearly no need for civilian tank ownership.

Now the other side of that coin though is if you're making something where the military looks bad; that tends to get the thumbs-down from Army PR. How that usually goes is either you have enough money to hire one of those companies I mentioned where you can rent a tank for a few hours, use that and any other hardware they have laying around. It might be slightly obsolete-- say a T-72 rather than a T-90, for example-- but most casual moviegoers won't know or care about the difference (and really there are a lot of T-72's being used out there anyway). Make your battle sequences where you have rented hardware be actually kind of short in the filming, take several shots from different angles so you can recycle them to look like different scenes, that kind of thing.

Or, you take the cheap way out and use a lot of publicly available stock footage, tapes of news reports and what not, carefully editing them in. Say your protagonists are entering a war zone; insert clip from CNN talking about how so-and-so city is under fire; cut to tape of tanks rolling down nondescript street of vaguely ethnic city; cut to your actors running and taking cover under fire. No actual hardware in sight. This is the way a lot of sequels to low-to-mid-range action movies end up being done because the originals only did middlingly well and the producers don't want to lose money on a turkey of a sequel.

[Lord Revan]

Also these days if the actors aren't physically interacting (as in climbing on top of them or similar things) tanks would be probably CGI as that's cheaper as tanks are big, heavy and spend a lot of fuel even when used properly, so if that logistical headache can be avoided most production companies will do so.

[Elheru Aran]

If they can't use stock footage. But CGI is getting cheaper and cheaper, so that's possible-- build a large box with the general dimensions of a tank, put another smaller box on top for the 'turret', paint the lot blue or green and you're set. The quality of the CGI would matter price-wise, of course. I saw an interview somewhere where they were saying that you can get reasonably good CGI up to about 90% realistic without costing too much money... but that last ten percent costs a LOT of money. Sounds about right to me.

[Alyrium Denryle]

There are also times when the actual US military gets involved in a movie production, and one of the things they do is to operate actual military equipment used in such a production.

Supposedly they tried to do this with Independence Day and whichever military people the filmmakers were dealing with reviewed the script and said they liked it and would be happy to lend advice and support so long as they did one thing.

Remove all references to Area 51.

The filmmakers refused and that cost them any involvement from the US military.

I can imagine the rewrite going something like this.

"What about that alien spaceship that crash-landed back in the 50s, Area 51!"

"There is no Area 51, there is no alien spaceship"

"Mr. President, that is not...entirely accurate"

Some time later

"Welcome to Area 76, in the middle of bumbfuck nowhere Wyoming."

[Kingmaker]

"Welcome to Area 76, in the middle of bumbfuck nowhere Wyoming."

That's what they were going to do, but test audiences found the existence of Wyoming too implausible.

[Alyrium Denryle]

"Welcome to Area 76, in the middle of bumbfuck nowhere Wyoming."

That's what they were going to do, but test audiences found the existence of Wyoming too implausible.

If I had an area like that with aliens and the like, I would actually go out of my way to make the public think I had them somewhere else, so I could truthfully deny the existence of aliens in that fake area, and draw attention to it rather than where I actually have the secret facility.

Granted, I dont think our current military has aliens because I dont think aliens have visited our planet

[Lord Revan]

If they can't use stock footage. But CGI is getting cheaper and cheaper, so that's possible-- build a large box with the general dimensions of a tank, put another smaller box on top for the 'turret', paint the lot blue or green and you're set. The quality of the CGI would matter price-wise, of course. I saw an interview somewhere where they were saying that you can get reasonably good CGI up to about 90% realistic without costing too much money... but that last ten percent costs a LOT of money. Sounds about right to me.

depending how the tanks are shown they don't even have to be 100% accurate if you're only gonna see them from a distance and out of focus that 90% is more then enough, after all not every shot has to be perfect just good enough.

But my point was that it's highly unlikely (if not outright impossible) that a person could just walk to private collector and ask for 2 dozen tanks "for a movie" without a lot of questions being asked, since it's much easier/cheaper to fake a large group of tanks via special effects and/or stock footage then to use actual tanks in large numbers.

[Elheru Aran]

If they can't use stock footage. But CGI is getting cheaper and cheaper, so that's possible-- build a large box with the general dimensions of a tank, put another smaller box on top for the 'turret', paint the lot blue or green and you're set. The quality of the CGI would matter price-wise, of course. I saw an interview somewhere where they were saying that you can get reasonably good CGI up to about 90% realistic without costing too much money... but that last ten percent costs a LOT of money. Sounds about right to me.

depending how the tanks are shown they don't even have to be 100% accurate if you're only gonna see them from a distance and out of focus that 90% is more then enough, after all not every shot has to be perfect just good enough.

But my point was that it's highly unlikely (if not outright impossible) that a person could just walk to private collector and ask for 2 dozen tanks "for a movie" without a lot of questions being asked, since it's much easier/cheaper to fake a large group of tanks via special effects and/or stock footage then to use actual tanks in large numbers.

Oh, quite true, quite true. The thing though with tanks is that you're not likely to see more than two or three on screen at a time. Two dozen would be an ungodly number of tanks, hell I'm not sure there are two dozen Sherman or T-34 tanks still extant in operational condition for example and those would be the most typical to see in such large numbers in say a WWII movie. But how many can you actually see on screen at once? At those numbers it's probably easier to just insert them with digital manipulation into the picture apart from one or two that are close enough to make out enough detail that they have to look pretty good. Think of how they did the Rohirrim charge in Lord of the Rings-- only the horses and riders that were up close to the camera were real, everything stretching out into the distance was digital.

I believe there *are* companies that do supply period vehicles to films as a matter of course, or near replicas of said vehicles, and Hollywood studios do maintain relationships with various groups that either re-enact or restore vehicles. The recent Brad Pitt war movie Fury, for example, had several actual tanks rolling around. Depending on budget and the director/producers' desire for authenticity, it's not that hard to find something like that to make a movie with. Quantity would be another story, of course...

[Lord Revan]

If they can't use stock footage. But CGI is getting cheaper and cheaper, so that's possible-- build a large box with the general dimensions of a tank, put another smaller box on top for the 'turret', paint the lot blue or green and you're set. The quality of the CGI would matter price-wise, of course. I saw an interview somewhere where they were saying that you can get reasonably good CGI up to about 90% realistic without costing too much money... but that last ten percent costs a LOT of money. Sounds about right to me.

depending how the tanks are shown they don't even have to be 100% accurate if you're only gonna see them from a distance and out of focus that 90% is more then enough, after all not every shot has to be perfect just good enough.

But my point was that it's highly unlikely (if not outright impossible) that a person could just walk to private collector and ask for 2 dozen tanks "for a movie" without a lot of questions being asked, since it's much easier/cheaper to fake a large group of tanks via special effects and/or stock footage then to use actual tanks in large numbers.

Oh, quite true, quite true. The thing though with tanks is that you're not likely to see more than two or three on screen at a time. Two dozen would be an ungodly number of tanks, hell I'm not sure there are two dozen Sherman or T-34 tanks still extant in operational condition for example and those would be the most typical to see in such large numbers in say a WWII movie. But how many can you actually see on screen at once? At those numbers it's probably easier to just insert them with digital manipulation into the picture apart from one or two that are close enough to make out enough detail that they have to look pretty good. Think of how they did the Rohirrim charge in Lord of the Rings-- only the horses and riders that were up close to the camera were real, everything stretching out into the distance was digital.

I believe there *are* companies that do supply period vehicles to films as a matter of course, or near replicas of said vehicles, and Hollywood studios do maintain relationships with various groups that either re-enact or restore vehicles. The recent Brad Pitt war movie Fury, for example, had several actual tanks rolling around. Depending on budget and the director/producers' desire for authenticity, it's not that hard to find something like that to make a movie with. Quantity would be another story, of course...

even then there's gonna be questions asked (apart from the obvious how many and for how long) and getting the tanks wouldn't be too hard for an actual film production company, it's way too much work for pay off for someone intending to use those tanks for vandalism hence I said "for a movie" as in saying it's for a movie as a fake reason.

Again emphasing that in real life one can't just get unrestricted access to tanks, IFVs, APCs or any other high end military hardware so easily that criminals would ever bother with it.

[Elheru Aran]

I know, man I'm just talking about film-making here. Vandalism is simply so absurd a reason to rent out a few dozen tanks you'd have to be Archinist to even really think about doing that.

[Lord Revan]

I know, man I'm just talking about film-making here. Vandalism is simply so absurd a reason to rent out a few dozen tanks you'd have to be Archinist to even really think about doing that.

True enough but if there's one thing I've learned here it's that those making the most absurd claims (even if only indirectly) are the most pigheaded about their points, so you got to hammer the point that their claims are totally absurd over and over.

Though in his defense Archinist is far from the worst in this respect and his stuff mostly shows inexperience at how real life works and large amount of "movie logic" or "game logic" rather total disconnect from anything resembling reality like some of worse cases of absurd claims show. Also Archinist has show williness to listen and improve which is a good thing and something those other people making absurd claims rarely if ever show.

[Broomstick]

There are also times when the actual US military gets involved in a movie production, and one of the things they do is to operate actual military equipment used in such a production.

Supposedly they tried to do this with Independence Day and whichever military people the filmmakers were dealing with reviewed the script and said they liked it and would be happy to lend advice and support so long as they did one thing.

Remove all references to Area 51.

The filmmakers refused and that cost them any involvement from the US military.

I can imagine the rewrite going something like this.

"What about that alien spaceship that crash-landed back in the 50s, Area 51!"

"There is no Area 51, there is no alien spaceship"

"Mr. President, that is not...entirely accurate"

Some time later

"Welcome to Area 76, in the middle of bumbfuck nowhere Wyoming."

Actually, I've long suspected that area 51 is now (if it hasn't always been) a decoy purposely made to look just suspicious enough to attract the conspiracy theorist types while any real exotic/spooky/alien stuff is stashed somewhere that is actually secret.

[Ralin]

Actually, I've long suspected that area 51 is now (if it hasn't always been) a decoy purposely made to look just suspicious enough to attract the conspiracy theorist types while any real exotic/spooky/alien stuff is stashed somewhere that is actually secret.

I suspect it's more that it was originally a top secret research and testing facility, but that they've relocated most of the really important (and potentially visible) secret stuff since it became a pop culture thing. They probably still test sensitive stuff there with an element of what you're describing.

[Ralin]

In fact, thinking about it more I'd bet that if this theory is accurate it's less about decoying the conspiracy theorists and more about encouraging them to publicly make idiots out of themselves to discredit them (and by association other critics) when they latch onto something genuinely hinky that the government is doing.

[LaCroix]

Actually, it is not that uncommon - a couple of friends of me do have tanks and APCs. Two of them evne have their own private museums. One of them holds an annual meeting event at his museum, where all the other lunatics drive or transport their vehicles to and then spend a week driving them around on a private property. That way, I rode pretty much everything that was used in WW2 at least once.

Kettenkrad is the most fun.

[Elheru Aran]

Kettenkrad... is that the half-track motorcycle thing that was used as an artillery drag or something like that?

[Khaat]

"Light tractor for airborne troops"

okay, fine! i just like playing with embedding videos!

[Elheru Aran]

Ooo. That does look fun, actually. Probably doesn't go as fast as your typical ATV... but on the other hand, you're driving a mini-tank around, so that's kind of awesome

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I think the US Army was testing something similar for its remaining airbone units back in the 80s-90s.

EDIT: Never mind. I was thinking of something else.

[LaCroix]

They are actually pretty fast - 70km/h max. And they can do this in almost any terrain...