Mary Louise Szekely, Louis C.K.'s daughter, is credited with coming up with the story idea. According to C.K., he and his daughters really did have to take ducklings home from school. In real life, C.K. had just returned from Afghanistan. His daughter said he should do an episode about taking a duckling to Afghanistan.
Although Louis C.K. normally doesn't go over details of episodes with FX before filming them, he made an exception for this episode due to its large scope and subject matter. The network rejected an initial projection of a $750,000 budget increase for it, and eventually OK'd an extra $250,000 for filming, as well as location work in Texas and California (with both locations standing in for Afghanistan).
Louis C.K.'s production deal with FX involved him taking on a small per-episode budget (starting at $200,000 and being raised to $250,000 for Season 2) in exchange for total creative freedom. FX does not submit script notes or other production suggestions, and the cable network does not see the episodes until CK brings them finished copies. However, CK does provide episode information to the network when he will need some extra funding in order to do location filming; this was the case when he had Texas and California stand in for Afghanistan in a Season 2 story based on CK's real life USO tour there, and when Season 3 episodes took place partly in Miami, Boston, and even China.
Keni Thomas and Lilly Robbins are real performers who performed for the U.S. troops in Afghanistan with C.K.
According to C.K., he was genuinely frightened during the scene in which the helicopter breaks down. He began yelling at the pilot to take him home.