Zero Dark Thirty is the 2012 drama that focuses on one CIA analyst's involvement in the decade-long American manhunt to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. The film was also one of the first to dramatize the raid on the Bin Laden's compound by US Navy SEALs in 2011. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, The Hurt Locker), the film encountered controversy in regards to whether the filmmakers were given classified information about details of the Bin Laden operation and the film's original release date (October 2012) occurring so close to the American presidential elections. The U.S. release date was pushed back to a limited release on December 19, 2012. and a wide release on January 13, 2013. Like the similarly themed SEAL Team Six: The Raid On Osama Bin Laden, portions of the film was shot in India (standing in for Pakistan) as well as in Jordan.
CIA SAD Ground Branch operative Larry (Edgar Ramirez) carries a Glock 17 as his sidearm. The security contractor John (Scott Adkins) draws his Glock while in Camp Chapman. A man on a motorbike pulls a two-tone Glock 17 after blocking the van Larry is driving.
Members of SEAL Team Six are correctly armed with Heckler & Koch HK416 carbines with 10-inch barrels and a variety of accessories, including Advanced Armament Corp. suppressors, EOTech EXPS3/SU-231A/PEQ sights and AN/PEQ-15 ATPIALs.
An operative at Camp Chapman can be seen with an M4A1 Carbine fitted with an M68 Aimpoint red dot scope. Another CIA officer is seen armed with a basic M4A1 Carbine while tracking Bin Laden's courier in Pakistan. Hakim (Fares Fares), a CIA SAD Officer who accompanies the SEALs as their translator during the Bin Laden raid, is armed with an Aimpoint-equipped M4A1.
U.S. Marines guarding the American embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan are armed with M16A2 rifles. The scene they appear in takes place in 2003, but they are wearing MARPAT LWH helmets and scalable plate carrier vests, the latter of which was not issued until 2008-2009. The LWH helmet did exist in 2003, but was in testing phases. MARPAT was only just being issued in 2002-2003, so the embassy Marines would've been more accurate wearing 3-color DCUs and IBA or PASGT vests.
Pakistani police officers and a guard at the CIA Black Site in Poland carry AKMS rifles. Navy SEAL Patrick (Joel Edgerton) is also seen taking an AKMS that was mounted on a wall in Osama's bedroom after raiding the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad.
Pakistani agents clad in burqas wield "AK-47" rifles while apprehending a terrorist suspect. In reality, the rifles are actually blank-firing replicas used because of strict firearms regulations that make it difficult to bring genuine firearms to India (where many of the Pakistan-based scenes were shot).
