Retort to the Pentagon from the creator of the film “A House of Dynamite”, after the criticism launched by the US military: “The anti-missile system is imperfect”

Noah Oppenheim, the screenwriter of the thriller “A House of Dynamite”, directed by the American filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, responded to the Pentagon's complaints about the accuracy of the way the film depicts the US defense systems, saying, “with all due respect”, that he “disagrees” with them, writes The Guardian on Tuesday.

In an Oct. 16 internal memo obtained by Bloomberg, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said, “The fictitious interceptors in the film miss the target, and we understand that this is meant to be an engaging piece of drama intended to entertain the public,” but the results of real-world tests “tell a very different story.”

The agency's internal document from the US Department of Defense also says that US missile interceptors “have demonstrated a 100% accuracy rate in tests conducted over a decade.”

“What we show in the film is correct”

Oppenheim, a former president of NBC News, said he had spoken with “many missile defense experts, all of them officially … our missile defense system is grossly flawed.” He added: “What we show in the film is correct.”

In the film, ground-based interceptor missiles launched from Alaska fail to stop a nuclear attack on Chicago.

However, physicist Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear expert, told Bloomberg that the threat presented in the film is probably the simplest the United States could face. “A robust defense should anticipate multiple intercontinental ballistic missile attacks and credible decoys, as well as direct attacks on missile defense elements, but none of these were part of the story in this film. The fictitious threat is probably one of the easiest.”

Kathryn Bigelow told The Guardian that the film did not seek the Pentagon's approval or cooperation to ensure its independence, stating: “Our nuclear weapons are a structure that can fail. There are men and women working behind the scenes in this field whose competence allows us to sit and have this conversation. But competence does not mean they are infallible.”

The US currently has 44 land-based interceptors stationed in Alaska and California, and in 2020 the Pentagon awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract for a new generation of land-based missiles to be delivered in 2029.

In May, US President Donald Trump proposed a “Golden Dome” missile system that includes space-based weapons to intercept attacks against the US.

Recently released on Netflix, “A House of Dynamite” quickly reached the first position of the platform views in Romania as well. He sparked a debate on several topics. How close is humanity to possible atomic annihilation? A single major event, for example an anonymous missile that hits the territory of one of the countries, killing millions of people, can trigger a domino reaction of the armies of the great powers, which can no longer be reversed?

The film, which stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris and Tracy Letts among others, has garnered strong and diverse reactions. Military experts or analysts specializing in the US chain of command were interviewed. Some of them consider it a plausible representation of a real risk. For others, it's a forced cinematic representation.