What 'Hunter Killer' Gets Right About Submarine Warfare
This submarine warfare film might be fiction, but its underlying action feels all too real.
By Alex Hollings
Four Navy SEALs covertly entering Russia, rescuing its Vladimir Putin-like president from a well-orchestrated coup, and then escaping in a submerged submarine definitely sounds like fiction. And while the sweeping brushstrokes of Hunter Killer, which hit theaters October 26, are indeed a fantasy, its depiction of submarine warfare is startlingly realistic.
From the accurate sets, to illustrating the chain of command, to conveying the very physics of submarine warfare, Hunter Killer checks all the boxes—and this is how they did it.
Employing Real-World Warriors
The close relationship Hunter Killer tries to maintain with the real world is by design: The story itself is based on the novel Firing Point, which was co-authored by warfare historian Don Keith and former U.S. Navy submarine commander George Wallace.
Wallace's experiences in the control room of real nuclear submarines directly informed the ways the story clings to reality, though, as Wallace will readily admit, not all of his real experiences translate well into film.
War On Screen
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Hunter Killer depicts an alternate reality in which a Vladimir Putin stand-in falls victim to a well-organized coup attempt. As the situation rapidly unfolds, it falls upon the crew of a single U.S. Navy Virginia-class submarine, helmed by Gerard Butler's Joe Glass and four Navy SEALs, to save the Russian president and avert a global war.
The circumstances may be fictional, but Hunter Killer leans heavily on the reality of warfare, both deep beneath the sea and at the business end of a Navy SEAL's FN Scar assault rifle.
Getting Inside the Submarine
Although the movie's poster prominently features names like Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman, the Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine, where much of the film takes place, is a character all its own. The U.S. Navy currently employs 28 of these submersible vessels for operations ranging from intelligence gathering to shoreside force projection by way of its complement of Tomahawk cruise missiles. But the Virginia-class submarine's claim to fame is its ability to hunt and destroy enemy vessels, both on the surface and skulking beneath the waves.
Butler and the film's director, Donovan Marsh, spent three days at sea aboard one of the Navy's Los Angeles–class attack subs before filming just to gain a better appreciation for what life is like operating hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface.
"I asked them to do all the maneuvers from the film, as though they were being chased by a torpedo..."
In fact, it was Marsh's time aboard the USS Houston that led him to make a dramatic (and expensive) decision regarding the film's production: He built an entire submarine set atop a massive gimbal that would allow actors to move around in much the same way a real submarine's crew would while maneuvering in a combat environment.
"I asked them to do all the maneuvers from the film, as though they were being chased by a torpedo or had to make sudden evasive maneuvers," Marsh told Popular Mechanics. "They did this thing where they angled the submarine down to 30 degrees, and literally, everyone had to lean back and hold on or they'd fall over. It was very dramatic, and I thought, 'Man, I'd really like to do this for real.'"
Armed with blueprints provided by the U.S. Navy, Marsh and his team set about building replicas of the interior quarters of a Virginia-class submarine that they proceeded to mount on a massive, hydraulically powered platform they then programmed to approximate the way a real sub would shift and turn. The result is a sort of nuanced realism on the big screen you have trouble putting your finger on. The crew aboard the USS Arkansas (Butler's sub in the movie) aren't leaning and shaking like Captain Kirk on Star Trek—they're really holding on.
A Dash of Movie Magic
Hunter Killer Productions
But not everything depicted aboard the USS Arkansas is true to life. Sometimes, elements had to be changed for the sake of operational security, but other changes helped tell a more compelling story.
"The biggest differences between what they showed on the big screen and reality were the distances involved, where you saw everything in terms of a few hundred feet maybe, and where you're seeing everything in very fast 'real time,'" former sub commander and the book's co-author George Wallace explained. "We deal in, in some cases, hours, but certainly multi-digit minutes."
The speed and distances shown on screen, according to the film's director, were all for the sake of clean, coherent storytelling. But there's one thing both author and director agreed on that the movie really did get right—terror. The sense of foreboding of hunting, or being hunted, in a metal can deep beneath the ocean's surface.
As Wallace put it, the old axiom "alone and unafraid" isn't appropriate for submarine commanders. You may be alone, but fear is a part of the job.
Yes, Navy SEALs Are That Badass
While much of Hunter Killer takes place aboard the USS Arkansas, the film also focuses heavily on U.S. military personnel operating in the Pentagon and on a four-man team of Navy SEALs sent into Russia to conduct reconnaissance.
The SEALs enter into Russia on foot, after conducting what's commonly referred to as a HALO drop (High Altitude Low Opening) near the border. HALO operations are intended to limit the visibility of the operator by jumping at altitudes in excess of 30,000 feet (more than twice a normal skydiving altitude) and waiting until the last possible moment to open the parachute. It's a technique employed almost exclusively by the special-operations community, with its invention widely attributed to the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s.
While the film's execution of tactics and the loadouts conveyed a sense of accuracy, would the U.S. really insert a four-man SEAL team into Russian territory?
"The likelihood that we would use them to insert a four-man team into Russia for anything really depends on the political leadership," Jeff Butler, former Navy SEAL and CIA officer, told Popular Mechanics. "That would be a decision made by policymakers, but it's certainly possible, if not currently plausible, in the case of Russia."
Once the SEALs are on the ground, they quickly find themselves tasked with the seemingly impossible. They need to infiltrate a secure Russian military facility, extract the Russian president, and make their escape via the inbound USS Arkansas.
USS Virginia in 2004.
It's not at all uncommon for Navy SEALs to conduct operations that involve America's fleet of nuclear submarines. Many subs, like the Virginia-class USS John Warner, have what are called "lockout trunks" that can be flooded with water and opened to allow SEALs to exit the submarine without it surfacing.
The USS Jimmy Carter, a Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine, was modified to add an additional 100-foot-long, 2,500-ton section referred to as the Multi-Mission platform that is used specifically to deploy unmanned underwater drones, SEAL submersible vehicles, or even dozens of Navy SEALs themselves.
"SEALs operating in and under the water is what separates us from other SOF units, especially our SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SVD) Teams that work clandestinely from submarines routinely." Former Navy SEAL and New York Times bestselling author Brandon Webb told Popular Mechanics. "This type of exfil would be a tap-in for the SVD guys."
A Closer Look at Russia
Hunter Killer's depiction of a highly capable and efficient Russian Navy is, perhaps, its greatest departure from the reality of today's world.
Russia's struggling economy has forced the nation to pick and choose its military investments. While the Kremlin places a large emphasis on its submarine fleet, acquisition and maintenance funding for its surface fleet has been stifled in recent years by the nation's financial woes.
Some technology depicted on screen, including Russian missile defense systems, performed as they're claimed to by Russian military officials, though the jury is still out as to whether they truly are as capable as what's been reported.
Nonetheless, Hunter Killer works through its narrative to frame the story in a way that leans away from America's naval strengths and into Russia's longstanding defensive posture. The Russian Navy may not actually be a formidable threat to America's massive seaward fleet, but it could certainly be to a single submarine.
An Army of One
But the larger truth behind Hunter Killer's narrative is that huge, potentially world-altering decisions can often be thrust into the hands of a single individual, like Butler's Joe Glass.
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And also like the very real Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Force who chose to ignore warnings about incoming American ICBMs and disobeyed a direct order to launch retaliatory nuclear strikes in 1983. Petrov believed the incident to be a false alarm, and stood by his call. That decision, which could have potentially cost the lives of everyone he knew, ultimately averted a global nuclear war that could have killed millions. Thus far, we've been lucky enough to have men like Stanislav Petrov manning their posts, placing the greater good above all else.
Warfare, whether real or fictional, is really about the individuals who wage it, and ultimately, that's what Hunter Killer gets right.
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