'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

[spetsnazdave87]

Right all, I've got a lot of positive feedback on my latest loadout I've thrown together and I'm really bored with some writer's block so I'm gonna put up a Tears of the Sun loadout thread for anyone interested. I've gone with the team point man 'John Kelly Lake' (Johnny Messner) for my kit but I'll go into detail on other members of the squad including Lt Waters (Bruce Willis), Red (Cole Hauser), Zeke and Doc, Silk, Slo (Nick Chinlund) and Flea. The more I've researched this film and these loadouts, the more I think this would make a highly practical (and badass) team setup, so I've added info on team roles and how I personally think this would apply well to airsoft.

Background (from IMDB):

The 2003 film follows Bruce Willis and his Seal team as they venture into a Nigeria collapsing in civil war to rescue foreign nationals from ethnic cleansing. Initially only supposed to extract the westerners and leave by helicopter, an attack of conscience makes them change their minds and escort a hundred native refugees to the border on foot while being chased by a determined army unit.

While not perfect by any means, Tears features a lot of attention to detail in terms of the soldiers' kit and tactics, making it arguably the best depiction of 'modern warfare' around in films at the moment outside of Generation Kill. The squad is inserted by HALO jump and intends initially only to be in country for a short period of time, so their equipment is lightweight and geared towards combat rather than long range. This makes all the squad members' loadouts very airsoft-friendly.

Characters/Squad Roles



Left-Right: Flea, Doc, Waters, Lake, Slo, Red, Silk



Left-Right: Doc, Lake, a small bit of Slo, Waters, Red, Zeke.


The characters/roles/weapons are as follows:

Lt AK Waters (Bruce Willis): Team Leader

Waters is the team leader, with a simple rifleman set up. He uses an M4A1 with Aimpoint and Dlap laser, and a Mk23 Socom.

Kelly Lake (Johnny Messner): Point man

Lake is the point man. He uses an M4A1 with Aimpoint and Suppressor, and a Remington M870 with a Mk23 Socom as a sidearm.

Red (Cole Hauser): Support gunner/Demolitions expert

Red is the squad heavy gunner/demo expert. He uses an M60E4, Mk23 Socom and Claymore mines.

Slo (Nick Chinlund): Support gunner/ Electronic Counter Meaure guy.

Slo is the second support gunner in the squad. He uses an M249 para and a Mk23 Socom and is in charge of the ECMs.

Flea: Marksman

Flea is one half of the squad's marksman team. He uses an M4A1 with a carry handle scope, suppressor and cheek pad, and a Mk23 socom.

Silk: Marksman

Silk is the second squad marksman. He uses an M1A variant of the M14 with an M1 scope, and a Sig P226 as a sidearm.

'Doc': Medic/ M203.


Doc is the team medic. He uses an M4A1/M203 combination with aimpoint, a Sig P226 sidearm and also carries a 'battlefield pick-up' AKM on his back for a lot of the film.

Zeke: Radioman/ M203.

Zeke is the team radioman and the second 203 gunner. He uses an M4A1/M203 combination with aimpoint and a Mk23 Socom.

In the next post I'll start doing individual loadouts, beginning with Lake (as it's the one I've researched most) and then Lt Waters and the others.

[spetsnazdave87]

Kelly Lake- Point man.

Kelly Lake is the loadout I chose to replicate, mainly because we share similar hair.







Lake wears raid-modded US woodland BDUs (Same as the others), some kind of mesh fingerless gloves (I used cut-off nomex ones) and jungle boots in terms of clothing.

For a first line, as with most of the team he wears a blackhawk black riggers belt with blackhawk pistol mag pouches and blackhawk omega dropleg holster mounted on it (so he can run his sidearm in case he ditches his main load). I used guarder solid mag pouches in black and a black viper adjustable pistol holster for my mk23- they're a fraction of the cost of the real deals and socoms cant eject the mags in a soft holster very easily so I'm not too bothered about the cheapy stuff. He also has a blackhawk shotgun shell drop leg rig. These are rare and expensive. If you use an M500 or a G&P spring 870 I'd recommend you don't really bother unless you're die hard for this loadout as unless you need a crapload of shells it's a needless extravagance.

His load bearing equipment is a US woodland LBV vest, probably the blackhawk version but any regular will do. You can pick these up second hand in surplus shops and on ebay very easily. I modded mine, switching the pouches to vertical and moving the grenade pouches. You can fit six M4 mags in this vest, BFGs JUST about fit but its a tight squeeze. I'm gonna mod them further to take the bfgs at some point.

He has an OD duty belt hooked to the LBV- I used a TAG padded version for comfort but you could easily get away with a viper duty belt or alice belt or go for the likely real thing of a blackhawk duty belt. On his belt kit he has an alice butt pack, a radio pouch and at least one canteen pouch. There also seems to be a first aid or compass pouch on his left side. I'm running two extra alice pouches with grenade attachments removed so I have higher ammo carrying capacity but that's personal choice.

Slingwise, I can't quite work out what he's using. I think its some kind of carabeener/sling combination... will update when I work it out.

His M4A1 has a knight's RIS, suppressor, M68 Aimpoint in a cantilever mount and a flip-up BUIS (the 4x aperture type, Classic army do a version you can get off ebay for £20). He only has rail covers on the ris, no peq or grip. This could make battery storage a problem so either cheat and go vanilla foregrip or this would work with a gas M4.

His socom is pretty standard- suppressor, but no LAM. He's carrying five mags spare, four in pistol mag pouches and one in the pouch on his holster.

The M870 has side saddled shells and a duckbill flashhider for horizontal spread. You can't make a duckbill for airsoft so if you want to stick some plastic tubing round the end sprayed black that would probably do. I'm going to be using a TM M3 benelli with the side saddle, making a choice of reliability and shells over the other more accurate 870 options.

Last but not least, his most important weapon: his badass hair. Before I got my own clippers, it cost me £5 at my local barbers.

My almost-finished setup (just needs M4A1, shotgun and blackhawk shell pouch. The canteen pouches are also personal preference as I get thirsty in games)





Ammo capacity:

assuming six 85 round midcaps in the vest and six in the alice pouches on the butt, 1020 rounds for M4, 510 if using just the LBV. 6 25 round socom mags- 150 rounds in pistol. 20 shotgun shells in the blackhawk pouch.

Total cost of loadout:

Genuine woodland bdus: £40 the set.
Woodland LBV: £40.
Tailoring on LBV and BDUS: £40.
Gloves: £10.
Belt: £25.
Alice kit: £20.
Pistol mag pouches: £15 for two.
Holster: they go on here for £10 all the time.
Belleville US jungle boots: £25.

Total: £225. You could cut this price by using cheaper boots, acm belt, alice and pistol mag pouches, acm woodlands and acm LBV and not tailor it/get mother or wife to do it!

Any questions feel free to ask. Popping out for half an hour but will come back with waters' kit later on.

Dave

[Andy8746]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

i got as far as the ksc mk23 and silencer but think silk is uber cool sorry "uber of cool" so may go for the loadout again btw nice pics
p.s. what would you recommend brilcream or modern styling gel?

[spetsnazdave87]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

i got as far as the ksc mk23 and silencer but think silk is uber cool sorry "uber of cool" so may go for the loadout again btw nice pics
p.s. what would you recommend brilcream or modern styling gel?

I'll do the silk setup in a bit mate

I use V05 styling wax, but for those on a budget there's always the 'something about mary' approach...

[Andy8746]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

cheers getting an m14 so think ive found my load out and going to watch t.o.t.s again

[ohdearme]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

if you dont want to go the something about mary approach ask a hairdresser to pick you up a big tub of wax as most know where the outlets are.

lots of good info ive been eyeing this up for a while now may do a variant of it.

[spetsnazdave87]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

N3Ads in that case I'll do Silk's loadout for you next

[Andy8746]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

if you dont want to go the something about mary approach ask a hairdresser to pick you up a big tub of wax as most know where the outlets are.

lots of good info ive been eyeing this up for a while now may do a variant of it.

ninja looool

its just a cult film in my eyes and the bdu's would work well in woodland games

[ohdearme]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

i understood none of that..brain melted bit could be this herbal stuff that was planted in my cigarette...-_-

[spetsnazdave87]

Silk loadout.

Demetrius Silk

Silk is one of the two marksmen in the team.








His kit shares a lot of similarities with Lt Waters' built around a blackhawk enhanced yoke and Alice gear. He appears to have trimmed the grenade pouches off his ammo pouches, of which he seems to be using three- one on left and right for the yoke to attach to, and one in the centre by the buckle. You can't go wrong with the standard alice buttpack/double waterbottle combo.

The blackhawk yoke is very tricky to source in this country in OD and for a good price. If you want a cheap option I'd buy the OD copies of the LBVs and remove the mag pouch panels, threading the front straps from a regular Alice yoke into the front- would look almost identical and would cost you at least 2/3rds less than the blackhawk version.

I haven't been able to find a decent screencap of him (anyone who can please help), but he seems to be wearing a hydration pack (I'd guess an OD camelbak/arktis Hump if he's using the same as Flea) and a mishmash of pouches including a buttpack and several small utilities for flashlights, knives etc.

Holster is an OD blackhawk omega for his Sig P226. He has black double 9mm blackhawk pistol pouches mounted on the vertical straps of his alice webbing.

Bdus and boots are again raid modded US woodlands and US jungle boots. He's also wearing a US woodland boonie hat, a long scrim scarf he uses to camouflage himself and his rifle, and later in the film a black doo-rag type bandanna.

Gloveswise he's using cut down OD nomex pilot's gloves.

Weaponswise he's using an M1A M14 variant- a single shot only civilian version without the fire selector. It's fitted with a knights rail mount, knights one piece scope mount and an m1 scope. I believe Lucky Lefty is selling an almost identical setup right now on this forum (shameless plug for you there buddy). The M1A is heavily camouflage painted with some burlap on it for concealment.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

If you're not fussed about the M14s, he also uses Slo's M249 Para after the guy buys it.

I think that's everything for this guy... if I've missed anything feel free to update.

[Cheditor]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

Very nice, makes me tempted to do a sealy type loadout myself. Keen will be awaiting your other posts.

[curlyboy]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

Looks good, Have a look here for weapons information

http://www.imfdb.org/index.php/Tears_of_the_Sun

curlyboy

[kommissarboris]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

very nice, i'm going to watch this tonight, ain't seen it in a long time, i remember not liking it, but i'll give it another go.

Boris

[spetsnazdave87]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

Lt AK Waters (Bruce Willis)

(Many thanks to Drake from Northern Ireland and the original author of this rundown from Utah USA. I'm not going to go into the same massive detail but this section is based off that guide. Can provide link via pm if required).






Like Silk, Waters is wearing a Blackhawk enhanced yoke. You can use the LBV trick I mentioned in my previous post if you want (you're welcome ). The enhanced yoke attaches directly to the belt so you'll have to attach the alice webbing to the alice pouches but it's a cheap alternative- up to you.

On his belt he's using two Alice mag pouches with grenade pouches. He's using two canteen pouches and a blackhawk version of the alice buttpack. I have a repro I got for £15 which is pretty much identical (buckles not alice straps) so don't worry about shelling out megabucks for this. His radio is attached to the buttpack.

Like Lake he wears his holster and double mag pouches on a black riggers belt in his trousers, not attached to the LBV. Waters appears to have a socom holster though, unlike Lake, which is the type you can put a suppressor, LAM and spare mag on. These are very rare and expensive for the blackhawk ones but Mil tec i believe make a good copy if you look around.

Gearwise he doesn't wear any head gear (he has his bald shiny head instead), but wears raid modded US woodlands, black nomex cut-off pilots gloves and jungle boots.

For the purists, Waters also wears three knives. One on a webbing strap, an emerson knife most of the team use, another emerson knife on his thigh and another on his leg. For airsoft i really wouldnt bother! Like Lake and other squad members he has a carabeener for gun retention when slung.

Ammo capacity: 6 mags in the alice pouches- 510 rounds in 85 midcaps, and 5 mags in pistol pouches and holster for the socom, another 150.

Riflewise he's using an M4A1 with two horizontal rail covers on a Knights RIS, a cantilever-mounted M68 aimpoint with a vertical foregrip and a DLAP laser module. Dboys make a DLAP battery box widely available on ebay. Like Lake Waters also has the 4x aperture BUIS.

A lot of nitpickers had a go at the film when it came out because his aimpoint is 'on backwards' at one point. Basically, they're wrong. It's on backwards because he's using a PVS 14 scope on his M4 in conjunction to the IR laser in his dlap at night. Apparently common practise when using a similar setup to this is to mount the aimpoint on backwards so the NVGs can still be used without having to turn off or remove the aimpoint. Should he need to revert back to the sight quickly, he can just flip the aimpoint and remove the NV (as he is seen to do in the film).

Waters' M4A1, like all in the film, is the retro stocked version, not the LE version.

Waters also has his mags with jungle-taped magpuls for fast draw.

That's all for waters so far. Don't forget the key part of this loadout- being way to f***ing old to be a convincing seal

[spetsnazdave87]

Re: 'Tears of the Sun' Seal loadouts- a guide for any interested.

Cheers Curly, I've been using IMFDB for reference pics. I never would have picked up on the M1A otherwise

Boris it's work sticking with purely for the firefight. I reckon it would have been much better without Monica Belluci and with the original ending (they all die) but still a bad ass film.

Gonna do Red next, but first gonna go eat. I'm starving!