Goofs

Before Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) speaks to the Attorney General on video feed, she is incorrectly introduced by Lt Gen Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) as "Captain".

Abdullah Al-Hady and Susan Helen Danford drive to the Parklands house, enter the gates, and park at an odd angle; then an image analyst at Pearl Harbour brings up an overhead shot showing how their car is positioned.

However, near the start of the movie (before any of that happens) Colonel Powell briefs Lieutenant Watts and Airman Gershon, showing them the exact same shot of this car outside the Parklands house.

After the second Hellfire hits, you see the father pick up his daughter. In the aerial view, the shadows he casts are very long, like it is in the evening. In the next shot from the ground, his shadows are right beneath him, like it is high noon.

When the ground operative in Kenya begins to follow the terrorists he is holding his mobile phone to his right ear as he is saying "Bravo 2-7 following" but in the next shot as he is turning the car around and is saying the word "following" he has both his hands on the steering wheel and the mobile phone is nowhere to be seen.

During the meeting at the cabinet room, where a group of British officials discussing the legality of the drone attack, at a certain point of the discussion, the minister takes off his jacket, and remains in his shirt. A big sweat stain is evident under his arms pit, as a sign of his tension, however the stain disappears throughout the rest of the discussion.

The Reaper drone cannot hover; when loitering over a target, it flies in a circle. Yet the camera angle from the Reaper's feed never moves once settled on the target house.

A demonstration can be seen at the arms fair supposedly held in Singapore. Singapore does not allow demonstrations.

Although high-flying cameras can pan, tilt, & zoom; and they're stabilized; and they have very high resolution - they still suffer from poor detail due to atmospheric conditions like dust, clouds, and temperature differences in the air which make long shots (like 20,000 feet) fuzzier than shown.

In an early scene, Second Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) tells Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) that he's been a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) pilot for two years. Second Lieutenant is the lowest entry level rank for U.S. Air Force (USAF) pilots, so unless he was passed over for promotion, this is extremely unlikely given that USAF Second Lieutenants only spend 18 months in that rank before being promoted to First Lieutenant.

Alan Rickman is wearing his parachute wings on his uniform chest above his medals. Qualified parachutists serving in the British Army, the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Marines wear their parachute badge on the right sleeve at the shoulder. Royal Navy personnel wear parachute wings and flying badges at the left cuff. Those who do not serve with a parachute unit are permitted to wear a parachute badge without wings (known as a lightbulb). Serving personnel who qualified as Special Forces parachutists are allowed a different badge. During the Second World War, they wore that badge on the chest above their medals. The badge shown on Alan Rickman's uniform appears to be the Mess Dress Para Wings Qualification Badge. It would still be worn on the shoulder, not on the chest. Pilots wings and other flying brevets are worn on the chest above medals. The confusion appears to be that American personnel wear their parachute qualification badge on their chest. The British do not.

After the first explosion of Hellfire people visible through the smoke slowly go up and down on two parallel streets as if nothing just had happened.

In all the views of the machine gun mounted in the back of the pick-up driven by Somali militia, a side view of the weapon shows nothing inside - no bolt, no mechanism, empty.

At the end of the movie when the militia are removing the machine gun from the back of the technical, the one crewman lifts the base post the gun was sitting on and throws it aside. The base post would have been welded (or at the very least bolted) to the bed of the truck.

Towards the end of the movie, it is day time (possibly late afternoon) when Alia (in Nairobi, Kenya) is taken to the hospital. Drone pilots Steve Watts and Carrie Gerson (in Nevada, USA) leave the control cabin at what is supposedly sunrise. Col. Powell (in London, UK) leaves at the same time but is shown driving at night. It should have been around noon in London.

When the UK Foreign Secretary is going from an arms exhibition to his hotel room which is said to be in Singapore, mountains can be seen in the background behind the hotel lobby. Singapore does not have mountains close to the city center and suburbs.

As viewed from the satellite onto the Eastleigh roads, there is a visible 'STOP' written on the road, there are no 'STOP' signs drawn on Kenyan roads.

The location shown as Singapore isn't really Singapore. The background shows a traffic signal that isn't of the type used in Singapore. And there aren't any leaf less trees of the type shown.

The mechanical flying beetle camera is impossible. The smallest working true ornithopter is birdlike, with a wingspan of several feet. The beetle-like hard wing covers would be dead weight, and would interfere with lift. Beetle wings are much larger than the beetle's body - they fold before being covered.