Discovery Channel - HALO: Freefall Warriors

By Andrew Herd (22 May 2005)

iscovery have a great reputation for making fine programs, but HALO is the best I have seen from them yet. Freefall Warriors comes on two DVDs and having planned to view them over a couple of nights, I ended up glued to the screen until the titles rolled over the final sequence. I guess the best recommendation I can give for the set is that even my wife settled down beside me to watch - normally wild horses wouldn't drag her to see anything like this, but there is some absolutely breathtaking footage in this set and the direction is good enough to deserve some kind of award. To tell the truth, I wasn't really expecting to enjoy HALO, but having written the review, I am going to go back and see it all over again, because it was so well made and I don't want to think I missed anything.

Having been told never to get out of a moving airplane when I was a kid, I did a parachute jump when I was a student, which convinced me that all parachutists are certifiably insane, but that was from only 2000 feet. HALO stands for High Altitude Low Opening and we are talking deplaning at up to 35000 feet, with the ripcord pulled below 4000. At night. The technique was developed during the Cold War as a method for getting special forces into sensitive areas, but ran into problems because the initial jumps were into jungles - troops got hung up in trees and separated from their kit, but nonetheless, it was clear that the idea was a good one. HALO came into its own more recently, with US involvement in the middle and far East, areas of the world characterized by large areas of mountain and desert that are absolutely ideal for this kind of operation. Using HALO, a team can be inserted to recover hostages, seize or destroy targets, or to direct airstrikes using lasers. The chutes they use are the latest ram-air wings which can fly at up to thirty miles an hour and even allow a team dropped in one country to fly over the border into another.

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The first DVD opens at the Army Special Forces base at Fort Bragg, where, despite the incredible competition for places on the course, four candidates are late because they have trouble finding the front door! As the camera pans across the troops, stress is visible in many of their faces, because some have waited ten years for a chance on the HALO course. All of soldiers present have completed static line parachute drops, all of them are masters of their specialist areas, but none of them have jumped into the night with an oxygen mask blinding them as they fall in a tight group at up to 150 miles an hour towards a target only 50 meters across - and that is what they will have to do to get their wings.

Discovery tells a fantastic story, with the usual great action footage, but although the focus is very much on training and techniques, the human elements aren't left out and ultimately this is what makes HALO such a great pair of DVDs. There is a lot to see, because absolutely no time is wasted on the twenty day course, with each day's work lasting twelve to fourteen hours, most of it taken up by punishing physical training that leaves the students dog tired. On the first day, the class is taught the basic freefall position, with arched back, arms and legs outspread to steady themselves; ordinary parachutists have to learn this position, but getting it absolutely right is vital for HALO, because of the serious danger of collisions at high altitude and high speeds. The first challenge the students have to pass - in fact, one of the major challenges of the course - is to learn to hold the freefall position and how to use their arms and legs to prevent themselves tumbling or spinning, as either fault might lead them to their deaths. Having done a jump, I was wondering how it was possible to teach people the fine techniques involved in a mere twenty days, but the military were way ahead of me - they have the Dragon.

The Dragon is a wind tunnel, but not as we know it. Quality thinking isn't best done when you are hurtling out of a Hercules towards terra firma and some bright guy had the ingenious idea of turning a conventional tunnel on its end and sticking a 24 foot diameter fan in the base, driven by an engine so powerful it can generate a 180 mile an hour vertical wind. The fan is so powerful that it is possible to fly on top of the blast it produces; but only if you get the method exactly right; simulating freefall conditions almost perfectly. The benefit of the Dragon is that it allows students to learn in a relatively safe environment and they can spend many minutes at a time riding its breath, compared to the sixty seconds or so of freefall that a live drop would produce - but that doesn't mean to say that there are no risks at all. On the DVD, one of the instructors recounts how he broke his neck trying to rescue a student who had got it badly wrong and had been blown to the very top of the chamber.

On the first day in the Dragon, students are tethered to the ground so that they can concentrate on maintaining the freefall position and learning how to 'fly'. The DVD makes it clear that this is very subtle stuff and within moments it is clear that some of the trainees are going to have real problems mastering the fine movements needed to prevent spins and sudden exits from the chamber. This scene shows up the ethos of the school really well - instead of the macho 'see one, do one, teach one' attitude I was half expecting, the instructors give their all trying to help, partly because they must know how much a pass means to the guys they are training, and partly because they have clearly been really well selected for the task. Video is extensively used as a training aid, each second of footage being gone over in fine detail. In one scene, where students are shown what they should have done with their bodies and hands to stop spins developing - in case we are in any doubt about how good the instructors are at their job, the next scene shows four of them flying around inside the Dragon, making it look like a walk in the park.

Next is parachute packing. This vitally important task has to be learned in a mere four days, before the students have to jump with a parachute they have packed themselves. Each man has to pack his main chute, the reserve being packed by a professional rigger. Packing an ordinary parachute is hard enough, but the special forces shutes are made of 370 square feet of nylon, which has to be packed into a 12 inch deployment bag; no easy task, given that everything has to be done against the clock in a hangar where the air temperature frequently exceeds 100 degrees. Back in the Dragon, students learn to fly with a loaded pack - on a real jump they might find themselves carrying up to 150 pounds - which introduces new problems with their stability.

Day six and the course relocates to Yuma in Arizona for live jumps. Yuma has the advantage of being well clear of controlled airspace, leaving maximum flexibility for jump planning; it is also very similar to the type of desert areas where combat jumps will have to be made. By now, the students are endlessly practicing their pre-jump checklists, knowing that, with no margin for error, their life depends upon getting everything right first time. In one of the best scenes on the first DVD, the instructors talk openly about problems they have had and even their fears about jumping; once jumping starts, students will do 2-3 jumps a day for nearly two weeks, each mission being more difficult than the last, and their instructors know just how dangerous things will get. At the end of the DVD, the students do their first live jump from 12000 feet - despite their training, some exit the plane tumbling over and over, while the instructors skilfully freefall down with them, correcting mistakes and facing them around the right way prior to chute deployment at 4000 feet.

A great disk, skilfully shot, with some fantastic footage, but most of all, well edited by a director who brings out the hopes and fears of all the soldiers involved in a way few can.

Disk 2 'Falling Forever' takes over where the first disk leaves off. In some senses, this disk is where all the action is, but I would advise buying both DVDs as you will get a lot more out of Falling Forever if you have seen the first disk. After a recap of part one, we move on to watch some of the most exciting footage I have ever seen, true HALO jumping, shot close up and personal. On only their second day at Yuma, the students have to pass a make or break test, which is that they have to prove they can exit the plane under control, fly a stable heading in freefall and pull the ripcord at exactly 4000 feet. Soldiers who lack any of these crucial skills risk endangering their buddies, as HALO teams jump in extremely tight groups and a high speed mid-air collosion could easily be fatal. Even at this point, jumps are being videod by instructors wearing special camera hats in an attempt to identify and iron out faulty technique - one accusation you can't level at the Yuma people is that they don't try their hardest to pass everyone. But standards are high - one of the most likeable students, Corey Paul, never manages to get his tendency to spin under control and his emotion when he fails to pass the test is clear for all to see. The scene where the commanding officer tells Corey that he will have to leave the course and return to his unit is a fine example of what true leadership is all about, but it doesn't stop us feeling sorry for Corey as he begins his dejected journey home.

The same night that Corey is failed, an instructor on the course is killed when he breaks his neck during a bad landing on a night jump. All of a sudden, the fabulous footage we have seen of planes and parachutes and freefall is brought into a sharper focus by the ease with which a really experienced soldier can get killed on HALO training - just imagine how dangerous real missions are.

The course moves on, because it must and now the jumps involve carrying bulky rucksacks weighing 30 to 40 pounds, which are a real problem for a few of the trainees, despite their time in the Dragon - some of them go into spins immediately on exiting the plane, with gyrations so wild it is dangerous for even the instructors to go near them. From there, the next step is jumping wearing an oxygen mask and carrying a weapon. The problem with the mask is it wipes out most of the view and everything has to be done by feel. By now, students are jumping in teams of eight and trying to land within 100 meters of each other, increasing the risk of collision to the extent that we see a very near miss between an instructor and a student who suddenly loses control. With that loss of control, the student, who had otherwise done really well, was failed.

Now there are only days to go before the final test. The last jumps are done in complete darkness - the ultimate challenge. Students have to leave the plane in a tight team and fly in a stacked formation, with no visual clues as to where their buddies are except for small lights fixed on the front and back of their helmets. The reason for doing jumps like this is that they are virtually undetectable, even by people with sophisticated night vision equipment who know they are happening. In the final scene, the course, who have done 28 high altitude jumps in fourteen days, pass their final test, which is a night jump using oxygen, carrying a weapon and a forty pound bag. They all pass, even a guy who broke his ankle in the landing.

From the HALO course, students pass out to join 45 specialist freefall teams spread around the world, ready to undertake the most dangerous missions - the class that preceded the one shown in the Discovery DVDs found themselves in combat 72 hours after getting their wings.

Verdict? I have no hesitation in recommending HALO; if you want a combination of excitement and a great story well told, there isn't anything to beat it.