Although First Signal takes place in 2014, at the 1:09:55 mark President Colton predicts the future when she states to President Tupolov, "You should continue pushing into Donbas." Which is followed by a conversation about NATO and sanctions, thus predicting the future of actual events when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, New Hampshire served as Chièvres Air Base (exterior and interior). The windowless function room at the Discovery Center was the location for the conference room scenes that take place in a "bunker" under a hotel complex.
The Air Force uniforms worn by General Reager and Major Sampson were not costume rentals but are actual Air Force uniforms ordered by Department of Defense approved vendors. The awards and honors are not props but awards that officers of those ranks may actually have given their field and experience. Director Mark Lund met with a costume house in Los Angeles to outfit these characters, but decided for authenticity to purchase instead.
Operation Paperclip [mentioned in this film] was the [secret] program by US intelligence and military services
in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the U.S.A. for government employment after the end of World War II. Many of these personnel were former members, and leaders, of the Nazi Party. Operation Paperclip, and its new German employees', helped boost the U.S.A. space race against the USSR [now Russia] and land the first man on the moon.
The 82 page screenplay was shot in 18 days exclusively with Blackmagic cameras.