By Karl J. Paloucek
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One of the most spectacular facets of Triggers, and one that Willis obviously really loves, are the ballistics tests, which are shot with gun-mounted cameras and high-speed photography to capture the projectile’s entire trajectory as well as its impact. “We do a lot of ballistics testing, and testing of the weapons systems either against themselves or against one another,” he explains. “We’ll cover everything from pistols to battle rifles, to assault weapons, to shoulder-fired rocket systems, to artillery pieces. It’s a really exciting series, and it was a lot of fun to shoot.”
Triggers‘ premiere episode is typically fascinating — a look at the evolution of the handgun, from its early days on battlefields in the 16th century, through curious developments like multi-barreled handguns from the 19th century, the Colt 45 and up through today’s standard military-issue Beretta 9mm. Some of the models they fire in the episode are incredibly rare and often bizarre, and are often far from accurate, even for the experts firing them. “The weapons are predominantly from private collections,” Willis says. “Our armorer, Mike Tristano — he was our primary armorer — he has quite an extensive personal collection of weapons, which he allowed us to use for this series, which is great, on top of being in charge of safety and being the gun wrangler on the set.”
The handgun competition is compelling enough, with ballistics gel and other targets helping to measure and illustrate the impact of each weapon’s effectiveness and accuracy. But I had to wonder how they’ll compete with heavier artillery, where considerable destructive power comes into play and each projectile fired has a heftier price tag. “There’s still an element of [competition],” Willis says. “I think anytime that you’re engaging a target with a weapon like a shoulder-mounted rocket system, like a LAW rocket or an AT4, or even a Stinger missile, the challenge isn’t just hitting the target itself … now you’re talking about a one-shot deal. It’s not like I have 15 rounds in a magazine with a Carl Gustav. I’ve got this one shot. Am I going to hit the target? Am I not going to hit the target? And is my weapon system going to be effective against the target?”
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Although Triggers is a six-part series for now, Willis says that his imagination is pretty well unlimited when it comes to new directions to take this series, given the chance. “I think that we’ve just scratched the surface of what could be covered,” he offers. “I mean, you have aircraft platforms like the Spectre gunship and the defensive air platforms, and Little Birds — and all of these other weapons platforms that could be covered — that have evolved from some idea from the past.”
Of course, I had to ask what Willis would really like to get his hands on, either for Triggers or in general, and he naturally obliged with a wish list worthy of a kid at Christmastime. “Obviously, the belt-fed weapons haven’t even been touched yet, such as the M60 … the M249 SAWs; some of the foreign belt-fed weapons systems. I would love to get into machine guns and cruiser weapons. We haven’t really touched on mortars, which are man-sized, portable artillery that’s moved by infantry. And me, personally? I would love to get my hands on a minigun. Firing 6,000-9,000 rounds a minute — that sounds like a lot of fun, to me. I would really enjoy that. Especially a minigun fired from an air platform, like an H-60.”
If Triggers takes off for Willis as it’s expected to, maybe Santa will help Military Channel line up a few of those opportunities. (And that we’d also like to see.)
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Photo: Military Channel