I agree. Though I didn’t see the point of the drone pilot plot anyway - unless it was a commentary on Clancy’s habit of including unnecessary plots.
Seems like a decision made by a bunch of out-of-touch higher-ups considering this is the SECOND Jack Ryan reboot in 5 years, the third in 20 years.
They really need to make a Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six show/movie since to the general public both of those franchises are far more iconic.
I’ve only watched the first episode so far, but I’m pretty upset that they’ve made Greet such a dick. I hope he gets better.
I’m in the middle of episode two.
Question about a scene in episode one:
I thought if you pulled a pin from a grenade you had x seconds until it exploded, period, and you couldn’t put the pin back in to prevent it. I’m wrong, I suppose?
I’m sure an armourer will be along shortly to give chapter and verse. In the meantime…
Yup, with ordinary fragmentation grenades you have to release the safety lever (also known as safety clip). It is the release of the safety lever that ignites the fuse, not the pin, and then you have a few seconds to throw it to safety. If you don’t release the safety lever then the fuse does not ignite and you can replace the pin. See Wikipedia’s article here and in particular this picture.
You hold the the grenade so the clip is between your palm and the grenade. After you pull the pin, you throw the grenade so the clip releases and then arms it mid air. Releasing the clip before the throw could be a really bad idea. At least, that’s what they taught me when I was in the army.
Also, putting the pin back in is a *lot *harder than you’d think.
There is a bit of error in terminology here. The safety clip—also called a “jungle clip”—is a wire clip that restrains the safety pin so that it cannot be accidentially pulled. It is installed at the factory for safety in storage and shipment and has to be removed before the safety pin can be pulled. The safety lever—sometimes referred to as the “spoon” because of its general shape—is a spring-loaded lever that is restrained by the safety pin; when the pin is removed and the lever released, it swings free and allows a striker to rotate and hit the primer which ignites a fuse leading to the igniter and main charge. Here is a diagram of a standard hand grenade.
As noted, you hold onto the grenade with the lever oriented in the palm or web of the hand until thrown to assure that it does not explode while still holding it. (The classic M67 fragmentation grenade was supposed to have a 4-5 second delay fuse but it was well known that it sometimes burned faster.) Although you see characters in movies or television often release the safety lever, pause to reflect on the path in life that brought them to this moment or make a pithy comment, and the lazily pitch the grenade like they are at a company softball game, in reality you would cock back the arm before pulling the pin and then throw it high and wide to get it as far the fuck away from you as quickly as possible. The only reason I can think of to release the spoon prior to throwing is if was to be used to disable a piece of artillary or something similar.
The pin on the M67-type grenades (and most other hand grenades) is just a standard cotter pin goiing through the upper housing and both sides of the spoon. The ends can often break when it is pulled forcefully, and even if they don’t it is unlikely to come out with the ends perfectly aligned to be inserted back into the hole. I won’t say it has never been done but I wouldn’t want to try reinserting a cotter pin while holding a live grenade and shaking from adrenaline. Newer grenade designs have either some kind of a keyed breakaway pin or a release-and-plunger system, and so cannot be safed once activated. The use of the spoon as a sort of “deadman trigger” is not recommended except for action heroes with a solid contract for at least another series. In general, pretty much everything you see in movies about how hand grenades are used and their effects on people are misleading if not completely inaccurate.
Stranger
Slight correction; the safety clip actually loops over the safety lever and onto a lip on the underside of the upper housing; it does not restrain the safety pin as I stated above. Here at the bottom is a picture of the upper housing and fuse assembly with the safety lever and safety clip attached. You can also see it here on the larger M61 grenade. The article indicates that it was actually intended to deal with the problem of jungle underbrush snagging and accidentially pulling out the safety pin (yikes!). It seems like a better option would be to secure the weapons in some kind of enclosed pouch but looking at LCE and MLCE rigs reminds me that for some reason battle textiles was basically mired in pre-WWII technology until about the early 2000s when actual outdoor equipment manufacturers started to get involved in making rucks and load-carrying frames.
Stranger
Thanks for the technical info, Stranger. I didn’t know the names of the different parts in English. In Finnish the safety lever litterally translates to handle (kahva), like in door handle.
Definitely need to be careful with those things.
Here’s a clip from a documentary illustrating your point.
It’s holding my interest, and I’m glad I am watching…saw A Quiet Place, and I wanted to see John’s other works. (am one of the few that’s never seen The Office) And I’d never seen someone on tv put a pin back in the grenade, so that’s a first!
When I heard John lost the role at Guardians of the Galaxy to Chris Pratt (and also to Captain America?) I felt bad for him…so I’m happy he’s having a great year. As aside, I know folks didn’t like GIrl on a Train , but his wife Emily did a fantastic job there, I’m curious to see what Mary Poppins sequel will look like!
I think not seeing The Office is a probably a good thing for people unfamiliar with Krasinski’s work. I’m three episodes in and I’m still wonering how Jim Halpert ended up joining the CIA to fight terrorists. 
My daughter and I start it tomorrow. We are excited and are big fans of John Krasinski. Loved The Office, A Quiet Place, and 13 Hours.
I’m not hearing any mention of John Terrence Kelly(aka John Clark). Does he appear in this series at all?
There is a John Clark-like character that heads the JSOC team; he has a different name but that could just be a legend. Really, though, there is little about these characters that isn’t completely interchangable with any generic action-thriller, so,it’s hard to get too worked up over the inclusion or omission of any character from the books.
Here’s to wishing they’d done a period Cardinal of the Kremlin (despite Clancy’s errors anout the viability of projected energy missile defense) or an alternate universe Red Storm Rising instead of this “original story” that is essentially a rejected pitch for a 24 spinnoff.
Stranger
I finished it. I really liked it. They actually do touch on quite a few of the characters that will become pivotal later on, but some of them are only briefly present. It hadn’t occurred to me that the JSOC character could be Clark. It’s definitely possible. He gives a different name every time he shows up, and he’s usually not with a team.
The series is set in Ryan’s early days at the Agency. (His next stop is Russia.) They had to retcon a bunch to get this to present day, and overall, I think they did a good job. Greer started off an asshole, but things definitely evolved there. Ryan stayed true to his complete boy scout ethos, and his tendency to see patterns and make connections that others miss. He seems a bit overwhelmed at times, but he’s supposed to be. He’s also the only guy in the room with the moral fortitude to stand up and ask the President to include the boy on the list of rescues. If that’s not Ryan, I don’t know what is. The series plays it the way the books did, with a fictional president, but contemporary events.
The series does have even a few of the quirks that I like about Clancy stories and that drive some people nuts, like the side stories about other characters. In this case, the drone pilot who feels guilty about a bad kill. They didn’t use it right though. He ended up physically very, very close to some crucial intel. I think Clancy would have tied that up with the pilot reporting back some information that tied into finding Suleiman. Or the pilot would have seen something that would have been useful during drone overwatch later (like the tunnel exit). As it was, the side plot was quintessential Clancy except for the fact that it actually went nowhere.
I hope this gets renewed. I think John Krasinski was extremely good in the role.
Why are cover jobs so mysterious in spy fiction that they actually cause more attention to be brought into the individual?
They could do that with a Chinese or NK or Iranian general.
Because they needed the plot complication of a Coast Guard chopper picking up Ryan at a party so he could make a transparent lie about his job. It makes no sense, and the unlikely reveal later is so absurd I laughed aloud at it. It would have been so much easier and more discreet to have someone from the local FBI field office pick him up at the party and skirt him off to the closest regional airfield or medivac landing pad where he could be picked up with little notice.
Also, CIA analysts don’t generally have any kind of legend or cover identity unless they are for some reason interoperating with unfriendly foreign intelligence agencies. The Agency employs thosands of analysts directly and tens of thousands through outside contractors like the MITRE Corporation or Northrop Grumman, and other than not talking about the classified aspects of their work and reporting foreign contracts and travel they aren’t in prohibited from disclosing their employment (though it is discouraged to do so in casual conversation from a counterintelligence security standpoint). Case officers—the operatives that go out into the field to collect intelligence and manage human intelligence agents—will have a cover identity, often as some minor official in the State Department or USAID, or more rarely a non-official cover as some kind of businessperson, student, or aid worker.
It really isn’t clear what the Ryan in this show is supposed to be—he keeps protesting that he is an analyst, but he jets across the globe and walks around DC with a pistol openly displayed on his belt with no indication that he is liasing with the FBI (which oversees domestic counterintelligence and counteroperations) or DHS (which should be taking lead on any external weapon of mass destruction threats on American soil). The running joke in The Hunt For Red October is that Ryan is actually an analyst and shouldn’t be in the middle of an operation where nobody really wants him (exaggerated in the film where Captain Mancuso mocks his interference and Ramius doubts even his historical analysis of Halsey) but is just played straight here as if he is a SOCOM operator with marksmanship aim who sometimes sits in a cubical and just happens to date the leading epidemiologist in treating the Ebola strain weaponized by thenterrorist he is chasing.
Stranger