DOD Gives Approval For Transformers 2"Revenge Of The Fallen"

Transformers 2 ;Due Out In Summer 09."The U.S. Department of Defense gave its official stamp of approval to the Michael Bay-directed film, not only allowing production amid the pristine dunes of the Army’s New Mexico missile range, but also letting filmmakers follow jets and fighter planes through the sky from nearby Holloman Air Force Base. More scenes were shot on the Navy’s aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, and Marines fill the ranks of the strike team battling the invading Transformers.

Among the equipment the movie is using in this desert sequence alone: two A-10 Thunderbolt II “Warthog” tank-killing jets; six F-16 Fighting Falcons; 10 armored Humvees; the Army’s Golden Knights parachute team; two Abrams tanks; two Bradley tanks; two missile-launcher vehicles; two armored personnel carriers; and a quarter-mile of the missile testing range, cleared of unexploded ordnance and built into an Egyptian town and temple. (Signs warn not to cross a perimeter just over the gypsum dunes, because live bombs could be hidden in the sand.)

The final battle the military is helping Bay create is supposed to be an enormous firefight in Egypt, but much of it is being shot in the White Sands dunes in a town built over the roughly quarter-mile cleared span."