Corrected entry: When the president talks to his wife who's in LA, he says he has a helicopter waiting to take her to Dulles airport, which is in Virginia. Then the General maybe 30 mins in the air after the attack says the helicopter never made it to Dulles. That's 2,444 miles - an average helicopter (which she gets in) can only go 250 miles before refuelling, they would have to refuel almost 10 times.
Factual error: Aliens are using TV satellites for their secret attack signal, making the TV picture quality poor. David shows the president how they do it by bypassing the curvature of the earth. However TV satellites don't work that way. They are "hanging" pretty much above their broadcasting area totally reflecting and spreading the signal back straight downward to earth. Turning the parabolic mirrors of the satellites to a different elevation would result in no TV signal on earth, not just a degraded one.
Suggested correction: Satellites do both. They both send the signals back down to earth but they also send signals to each other in order for the signal to cross the globe. And in those signals the aliens have hidden their own signal, and that distorts all satellite signals, causing TV's to receive a distorted signal.
Very few satellites directly talk to other satellites. Geosynchronous communication satellites don't. The antennas used for transmitting the TV signal are directional, but while directional antennas send most of their energy in one (or a few) direction, they still leak at least some energy to all directions, so it could still theoretically be used as described. The real mistake though is the aliens have advanced technology, so could easily have deployed a couple satellites of their own to perform this function, so why the need to use ones from Earth? Worst case just send a couple small ships up to act as relays.
It probably saves them time to use the satellites already in orbit. They are on a tight schedule and don't want to waste time and resources deploying their own satellites. Plus it's a small possibility for them that humans can take out their satellites, so hiding it in their own seems perfect.
They could be using the human satellites to disrupt communications or make communicating across the globe difficult to hinder any possible pre-emptive strike by Earth's armies acting in unison while the harvesters position themselves for the first wave of attack.
Corrected entry: There's no way the people at SETI, NASA, or anyone pointing a telescope at the moon wouldn't have spotted the mother ship long before it reached the moon. If asteroids only a few miles wide can be spotted millions of miles away from the Earth then space ship 1/4 the size of the moon are visible long before July 2.
Correction: Asteroids that are approaching or getting close to Earth have been doing that for millions of years and we spotted them over many years and many scans of a lot of space. A single relatively tiny spaceship popping up somewhere is not something we can see immediately unless it gets really close and we pick up a signal or echo.
Corrected entry: When Russell Casse says that he was taken by aliens years before, everyone reacts with tired groans. We know there are aliens, so why not believe him? He makes specific claims that can be easily verified simply by looking at what is going on in the world and he provides detailed information that could only be gained through personal experience. Given the desperate situation humanity is in they would definitely want to talk to him to see what they can find out about the attacking aliens. (01:43:55)
Correction: He makes specific claims that can be easily verified simply by looking at what is going on in the world. Given the desperate situation humanity is in they would definitely want to talk to him to see what they can find out about the attacking aliens. What have they got to lose?
He is just one of thousands, tens of thousands of people that claim to have been abducted and all have different stories, evidence, information and 99% of it is probably useless. So it will be a huge waste of time to start to believe all these people and interrogate them.
Correction: Russell looks like any number of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, these people are tired of that. Some may also have seen him drunk on TV and thought he was out of his mind. No mistake.
Corrected entry: When the president is in the air force bunker inspecting the spaceship, Dr Oken states that the scientists have been repairing it since the late 60's. The president says they've had it for 40 years and know nothing about it. That would mean that the movie would've been set in 2006 and not '96. (01:08:50)
Correction: No, they've had it since the Roswell crash in the 40s, he says they only figured it out enough to repair it since the 60s.
Corrected entry: When Steve crashes his F18 head first into the canyon wall, the nose itself is intact within the fireball into which the alien fighter flies.
Correction: It broke off instead of shattering. It's plausible. It's not exactly intact either.
Corrected entry: When the President is firing his F-18's cannon he pulls the trigger. The trigger operates the radio. The same button that fires missiles fires the cannon, the pilot has to select which one first with the 'hat' switch in the top middle of the joystick.
Correction: The hat switch is for pitch and roll trimming, the castle switch is for sensor control. The upper left switch is weapon release (preps missiles for firing) and the trigger fires either the cannon or missile, depending on what's selected.
Character mistake: In the Iraqi Desert, when the British soldiers speak of the casualties and losses, one of the British soldiers mentions the loss of the Belgian contingent and possible reinforcements, then makes a reference to the "Golan Straits"; there is no such place.
Suggested correction: "Golan Straits" is another word (albeit dated one) for the Goland Heights which is a region of Syria occupied by Israel.
The region in question has no straits, which is the point of the entry. And never would the term "Golan Strait" be used to identify a 1,800 sq km plateau. The actor, or writer, used the wrong term that a soldier in that situation wouldn't use.
Corrected entry: When Jasmine arrives at his destroyed airbase she stands at a fence outside the military area. She is filmed from inside but you can read a sign "Restricted Area" fixed to the fence. So the restricted area must be the whole world for the soldiers inside the airbase. (01:17:50)
Correction: From looking at the state of the sign and the fence to which it was attached, it had clearly been displaced by the alien attack.
Correction: The flight line inside of the base is restricted. At my Base they had B-52 aircraft. A sign on the that fenced area read restricted area. Use of deadly force authorized.
Corrected entry: When we see the alien spacecraft stop above the Empire State Building, it looks like the very top of the building is not far from the bottom of the ship. How can this be? The WTC buildings were about 1,000 feet high, so to clear those buildings, the bottom of the ship should have been much higher above the ESB. The same thing with the ship over the White House - in order to clear the Washington Monument, it would have had to be higher than it was shown above the White House.
Correction: For one thing, the ships aren't necessarily completely flat on the underbelly; and for another, a race with that kind of technology would have equipped their craft with vertical maneuverability as well as lateral. Simply put: they flew over and/or around the taller structures. Keep in mind that the entire approach is not shown of any one craft.
Correction: The needle of ESB is higher than the roof of WTC. If the ship had hit anything, that would be the antenna at the roof of WTC. Actually, they could have shown the scene of the antenna crashing down from great height and people running away not to be crushed by the antenna.
Other mistake: When David asks Major Mitchell if he can shoot the soda can, Major Mitchell has to ask a nearby sergeant for his sidearm, despite already having one on him when he shot the alien earlier.
Suggested correction: He probably shot his own gun empty or nearly empty, so he removed the magazine. They fired at least 10 shots at the alien, and he planted another 3 in it up close.
Corrected entry: Area 51 should be deep underground. The rocks should therefore provide everybody with enough cover for large bombs and even protection from the alien's primary weapon. When Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum go out to save the world in the alien spacecraft, the door to the surface opens. The launch site has its own door to the outside world. Why is it that the base is deep underground but has a big door leading to the surface that has no protection at all?
Correction: It's not simply a door into the outside, it's a launch tunnel at least one hundred yards long. There are heavy blast doors on the inside that are opened so that craft can exit, and it can be assumed that there are also similar doors on the other end of the tunnel. All this is a far cry from a simple surface door with no protection.
Correction: The Command Center is deep underground. Portions of the base are on the surface.
Corrected entry: The aircraft that deploys the nuclear missile at the saucer over Houston is a B-2 Spirit, a slow moving stealth bomber. It would have made more sense for the human command to deploy nuclear munitions using a more maneuverable fighter/bomber that stands a better chance of escaping the blast and any subsequent alien fighters that would be dispatched.
Correction: This supposes too many things, notably that the military was intact and had every aircraft at its disposal. We see the aliens struck the base at El Toro. Since we don't know what other bases, installations and aircraft may have been destroyed after the initial attack, we can't know what aircraft were at their disposal. Not to mention that the humans could have been hoping stealth would be an advantage over maneuverability.
Correction: The US Military is down to 7% as reported to Mr. Nimzicki earlier in the film. At that point, you use what's available.
Revealing mistake: In the exterior shot of Air Force One and its accompanying jets in the air, just before the shot of David getting nauseous aboard Air Force One, something suddenly comes up along the entire bottom edge of the screen. This is only visible on fullscreen DVD. (01:08:10)
Suggested correction: That is another jet guarding Air Force One.
Corrected entry: How come the aliens keep attacking major cities on July 3rd? After the first attacks people flee the major cities and surely the aliens must have realised that reaction would come. So why blow up abandoned cities?
Correction: They want to destroy the infrastructure, thus making the cities impossible to live in. This action will eventually kill a lot of people (lack of water and food, spreading of diseases breakdown of healthcare and law enforcement etc).
Correction: Abandoned cities were being blown up because every major city contains what we call natural resources. Our gas, our oil, our source of power. When Whitmore saw their plan in his head he discovered that "after they've consumed every natural resource they move on" the aliens will not leave any city in the world untouched until they have taken everything from us.
Firstly our resources are not in our cities, especially not the center. Oil and Gas are produced and stored outside the cities, for obvious safety reasons. Secondly if they want our natural resources, they wouldn't be blowing them up. Thirdly, I doubt they are after our oil, considering what technology they use, I'm pretty sure they were after the water and oxygen for their spacefaring civilization.
Correction: The aliens don't know if the cities are abandoned or not. They just know that most people live in cities.
Corrected entry: The humans are shown attacking the alien destroyers with AMRAAM air-to air missiles, which are shown both times to do virtually no damage to it. AMRAAMs are designed for fast moving air-to air targets, like the alien fighters. Yet, the humans do not see a need to fit their fighters with more powerful weapons, such as bunker busters, cluster bombs, nuclear bunker busters or tactical nukes, that would easily cripple or outright destroy the alien saucer. Instead, they resort to firing countless AMRAAMs at a 15-mile wide destroyer, which amount to pinpricks and cause needless deaths.
Correction: The AMRAAMs do not do "virtually no damage". They do absolutely no damage. The humans don't upgrade their munitions because there's no point to it.
Missile hitting the armor leave sparks flying, and glowing hot metal. I'm not sure if you would call that missiles doing absolutely no damage.
Still, that sounds like throwing pebbles at an elephant. They can hurt him but cannot kill him.
Actually the missiles do damage the alien ship. Just not serious damage.
The point is they didn't know how much damage they would do. The first time they tried they hit a shield and no damage was done. They had hoped they would do damage. Next to "bunker busters" and any other type of armor piercing warheads (which I doubt can be fitted onto air-to-air missiles) they had little choice in weapons types. Nukes won't work if you are dogfighting alien fighters close to the target, you'd destroy all your own planes, next to that you'd again destroy whatever city you were flying above just like Houston.
Correction: I believe you are making the assumption that after the Aliens attacked the Military bases, as stated in the film before the city attacks (In a report by General Grey), that there are still a large supply of "bunker busters, cluster bombs, nuclear bunker busters or tactical nukes" available for the planes to have them fitted before the final attack.
Next to that, they probably have the AA missiles loaded primarily to fight the fighters coming at them, not to damage the big ship directly. What else they had planned is never stated though. Perhaps they had hoped killing the mother-ship would make the destroyers retreat and they were simply delaying its attack.
Correction: He says "Nellis", not Dulles. Nellis Air Force base is about 250 miles from LA.