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Top Gun: Maverick
In May 2022 Top Gun fans were thrilled when the long-awaited sequel arrived and featured Tom Cruise, 60 at the time, reprising his role as daredevil pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, 34 years after the original installment.
The motion picture featured Maverick taking to the skies in F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, chasing his need for speed on his motorbike and in his own P-51 Mustang WWII fighter.
The plot of the movie is about the US Navy being tasked with destroying an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant, which sits in a deep depression at the end of a canyon. It is defended by SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), GPS jammers, and what fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 fighters. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell devises a plan to attack with two pairs of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
Changes to make it more realistic
If a Naval Aviator could make Top Gun: Maverick more realistic, what changes would a Navy pilot make to the movie?
Adam Daymude, former US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, explains on Quora;
‘Top Gun Maverick is one helluva a fun ride.
‘First off, they needed to use the Super Hornet because it comes in a two seat variety that allows for filming. But c’mon man! The Battle Penguin (F-35) would have been a much better option. That’s one thing I would change.
‘A low level ingress is suicidal so we’d have to bump our BPs up to at least flight level 300. Major change 2.
‘Where were the Growlers in this fight? All those SAMs would be incapacitated by either AARGM or jamming. Major change 3.
‘The most egregious error in the movie was a physics misconception. When they are pulling out of the target area, they could experience the 10Gs they talked about. But Gs come from a change of movement in a different direction. If I yank back hard on the stick, I’ll get some G’s but once I’m heading straight upwards to dodge those mountains, the G’s I got from maneuvering would go away. If I continued to do a 10G pull, all I would do is do a loop.
‘The final nail in the coffin was the whole F-14 thing at the end. I know why they did it, Mav was a Tomcat pilot. But those planes had not been properly maintained for going on 4 decades.
A boring movie
‘Here’s the problem though…if my changes were implemented, it would have been a boring ass movie because there wouldn’t have been much action. In combat, I think the most Gs I ever pulled was 4 Gs and it happened in 2 scenarios. Once, when I was coming in super hot to a tanker and screwed up the rendezvous and the others being a combat approach into Al Assad, Iraq. We had an initial (5 miles out) of 10K’. We had to pull significant G’s to bleed off our airspeed.
‘The 2 times I was engaging another aircraft were some of the most benign engagements I ever had; very little Gs pulled nor needed.’
Daymude concludes;
‘I wouldn’t change TGM for anything because the reality is SO much more boring. I didn’t want to see realism, I wanted to see some bad ass mf’ers go out and take down the bad guys. The scene where Mav proves the mission could be done is top 5 all time for me in movie history.
‘There is one part in particular that stands out as ultra-realistic: the choreography on the flight deck. They absolutely nailed that.’
Photo credit: Paramount
