basically you're gonna hand salute the world

and you're gonna hit the dirt, 'cause you're gonna die.

Hi this is Jocko Willink, and this is The Breakdown.

[upbeat music]

This is the movie "Navy SEALs".

[dramatic music]

- What's our altitude?

- About 30,000, six miles up.

- HALO jump is high altitude, low opening.

You skydive through the radar, so they don't see you.

You go at such a high altitude that they can't pick you up,

and then you open your parachute at a low altitude,

where the radar isn't effective.

You'd be usin' this if you wanted to go somewhere

and you didn't want anyone to know you were there.

It allows you to get in without being detected.

HALO jumping is fun.

So if you're just training, you're gonna have a good time.

If it's night, combat equipment, HALO jump,

there's gonna be a little more intensity in a situation.

But if it's just a fun free fall that you're doin'

during the day for a good times,

everyone will have a good attitude

and be havin' fun with it.

Let's go back.

[tape rewinds]

Loading magazines, that's pretty unrealistic.

You should have your gear prepped

prior to the jump procedures.

- 45 minutes to the beach landing site.

- That's one thing they usually miss in military movies,

is in a helicopter, or an aircraft, it's so loud in there,

you can't just be having a normal conversation.

You gotta yell and scream at each other,

or write stuff down, or use hand and arm signals.

You know how much time, 30 seconds,

means you're 30 seconds from goin' out.

- What's a minute?

- This right here.

Super complex.

- [Man] Six minutes.

[dramatic music]

- If you had a long flight,

sure somebody might be readin' a book, why not.

Almost every mission that I went on was in a vehicle.

And in vehicle we weren't readin' books,

because when you're in a vehicle outside the wire,

then you have to be payin' attention

for ambushes and what not.

Outside the wire just means wherever you're stationed,

you have a perimeter and the perimeter's got

you know a wall around it, there's barbed wire on the wall.

Barbed wire, so therefore we're inside the wire,

and then the enemy is outside the wire.

You know C130 is the actual transport plane

that the military used for decades,

and now we have newer planes.

But I think this film is from 1990

and it's probably pretty accurate that a C130 would be used.

The C in C130, designates it as a cargo plane.

People think that it's bad flying in a cargo plane.

It's actually awesome.

And people string up hammocks and put down ground pads

and get in sleepin' bags, and it's like time travel,

'cause you just go to sleep and you wake up

and you're at your destination.

I actually enjoyed travelin' in cargo planes, good times.

Lemme fast forward a bit.

[tape machine buzzes]

When you jump out of an airplane,

you're gonna have an altimeter,

which is gonna tell ya what your altitude is.

You're gonna have a parachute, and in this particular one,

where they're jumping above 13,000 feet,

you need oxygen, so they have oxygen on,

which is just an oxygen mask.

They're gonna depressurize the cabin,

so they can open up and that way you're not breathin'

that thin air.

That's why they need to put those oxygen masks on.

[dramatic music]

- Jesus Dane, who the [beep] packed your chute?

It doesn't look good, I wouldn't jump it if I were you.

- What's happening right there is actually pretty realistic.

Havin' your buddy check out your equipment.

In the SEAL teams,

and really in all branches of the military,

you rely each other to make sure you're safe.

The guy's checkin' the other person's pins on his rig

to make sure that they're gonna

deploy his parachute properly.

And then he's actually messin' with him,

which is pretty normal too.

If you know someone's scared of parachuting

then he's gonna get messed with a little bit more.

Never let anyone know that you're scared of anything.

Just keep it to yourself.

Someone on a team's called a jump master.

And that person is actually checkin' the navigation

and checkin' the position, and making sure

that we're exiting the aircraft at the right point.

There's an actual school that you go to

to become a jump master.

And inside a platoon of 16 guys, there'd probably be

two or three jump masters that could run a jump.

- [Man] Three, two, one,

[bell rings] go, go, go!

- That's real, yep.

The light system, where it's a red light, that means hold,

and when that light turns green, that's the signal to go.

[dramatic music]

You gotta remember that that aircraft's movin' very fast.

So if someone jumps and then you wait five seconds,

you're gonna be too far separated.

So yeah, you go out in a very tight group.

You stay close for awhile.

Once you get close to opening,

then you separate a little bit,

because obviously once your parachutes are open,

you don't want people hittin' each other.

So for a jump like this, you get to 2,500 feet

and you're checkin' your altimeter the whole way down.

You get a little separation

from the other members of the team.

This is your signal, it's called waving.

So everyone knows that you're about to pull your parachute.

And then you look in at your ripcord.

When you pull your ripcord out, your parachute deploys.

[dramatic music]

So what you should feel when you pull your ripcord,

is a little bit of a delay, and then something called

the pilot chute, it's a spring-load small parachute,

that thing jumps off your back and it grabs air,

and then that's what pulls out the rest of your parachute.

You're all of sudden pulled, it's like coming to

abrupt stop in the air.

So that's what it's supposed to feel like.

But as you can see, in this particular situation,

this guy isn't gonna feel a very hard shock,

because he's having a malfunction.

[dramatic music]

- [Man] Oh [beep]

- There's a buncha different things

that can go wrong with a parachute.

I had one malfunction in my career.

See that, there's a little square there,

right by his hands, above his hands.

It's called the slider and it actually comes down.

It's up with the parachute and as your parachute opens up

it slides down towards the base.

And sometimes that can get hung up.

It's called a hung slider.

And what it does is that small square of fabric

keeps the whole parachute stuck together.

That's what I had and my parachute was just not opening.

What do you do when your parachute doesn't open?

You follow the procedures.

You know we train really hard

to know what the procedures are.

And there's some things that you could do,

some procedures you can do, to try and get

to clear that malfunction.

So in my case, I was pullin' on the risers

to see if I could get that slider loose,

to start to come down.

It wasn't working.

I'm checking my altimeter, because at 1,900 feet,

I said okay, this parachute isn't gonna work.

And so then you go through your cutaway procedures.

You arch to get your body position correct.

You look at your cutaway, it's called a cutaway pillow.

You grab it, you pull that,

and then you look at your reserve handle,

you grab it and you pull that.

The first one cuts away your main parachute,

so that it's not gonna interfere with anything.

And there's actually a mechanism,

that when you cutaway your main parachute,

it starts to deploy your reserve parachute.

So sometimes you don't even need to pull the ripcord.

And hopefully you get a good solid chute at that point.

Which, I'm sitting here today,

which means my reserve parachute worked, thankfully.

There's been guys that have survived,

what's called a partial malfunction,

meaning that they have some fabric up above them

that's slowing them down a little bit.

But if you're goin' terminal velocity

and you hit the ocean, the ground,

it doesn't really matter, you're dead.

All right lemme play that.

This is the partial malfunction.

So you can see some of his parachute is open,

now if you hit the ground with that type of parachute

it's gonna be a real problem.

You're gonna be severely injured.

But if you hit the water with that kinda parachute,

I mean you have a chance.

- [Man] Get away ground.

- So there's a cut away.

- [Man] Pull out.

- And there is his reserve,

barely opens when he hits the water.

He had a decent amount of cloth over his head.

Once you hit the water, now you need to do a summary

of your crew.

And normally you'd be jumping out with a boat.

I think in this particular scene,

they commence immediately on a dive.

Which is, which is not very realistic.

The distance that you'd have to travel on a dive,

if you were to parachute in, you'd have to be at least

over the horizon, which is 12 nautical miles out to sea.

You're not gonna be able to dive 12 nautical miles.

There's no human diver that could do that.

So that's pretty unrealistic.

[upbeat music]

This is "Act of Valor".

- Black Bear it's Whiplash, have you loud and clear,

70 mile to set.

- I think what they're tryin' to simulate here

is something called a rigid hold inflatable boat.

Which is a kind of common craft used in the SEAL teams.

It's actually used for these type of situations

that they're showin' right now in this movie,

which is movin' up a river way,

where you have a little bit more latitude

to use a bigger craft.

- Intended location is 15 Mikes.

- 15 Mikes just stands for minutes.

Mikes is minutes, it's kinda interchangeable.

So the things on their helmet.

This guy's got an actual light.

I don't know why he's got it pointing backwards,

but he's got a normal camping headlight.

And then the other thing that they've got

is a night-vision mount,

but there's no night vision on their gear right now.

Well we move underwater a lot, but we do it

while we're diving.

So appearing like that is not very realistic.

One of the hardest things about maintaining a weapon

is bringing it through the water, especially in the ocean.

This is regular fresh water, so it's gonna be

a little bit easier, but still,

when you get outta the water,

you have to make sure that the barrel is clear,