Despite taking steps to have authenticity in its depiction of the U.S. Navy, the Top Gun franchise frequently lapses into Rule of Cool moments that, if they occurred in real life, would send pilots straight to the Danger Zone.
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General
- The most famous instance laughed at by real Navy pilots is the buzzing of the control tower. While it can (and has) been done before, it generally only occurs (a) outside active combat situations, (b) is approved beforehand, and (c) is treated as a spectacle. It certainly isn't done unannounced, nor over populated areas. A real pilot doing this would be grounded (most likely permanently) and up on disciplinary charges. (When Maverick does it at NAS Miramar, he violates so many aviation safety regulations [ignoring Air Traffic Control, unauthorized supersonic flight, supersonic flight over a populated area, etc.] that he would most likely end up in a federal prison. He merely gets away with a severe talking-to, twice.) Buzzing the Deck rears its head again in the sequel, though it's slightly more justified in that (a) the person flying the aircraft that does the "buzzing" was already expressly stated to be on his last posting and would not fly in the Navy again; and (b) the aircraft is downwind from the carrier and must fly past to realign itself with the deck.
- Any pilot/aviator who is described as playing by his own rules and disregarding authority would not be put in the seat of a multi-million dollar jet, let alone have a career spanning nearly four decades, without jailtime and a serious examination of the Navy's rules and regulations. The closest either of the first two films comes to exploring this occurs when Maverick disregards the demands of Admiral Cain and the government contract to push the Darkstar past Mach 10, which gets him placed under military guard and told to pack up and get off base. Cain notes that if Ice hadn't called to have Mav sent over to North Island, he would have been dishonorably discharged, effective immediately. It's justified In-Universe due to Iceman (being a Commander of a naval fleet) pulling strings to keep Maverick employed, as he would have been dishonorably discharged several times over.
- In both the original film and the sequel, Maverick rides his motorcycle onto a military base without wearing a helmet. No one on a military installation would get fifty feet like that without getting stopped. A pilot would be in special trouble; it takes a lot of money to train one, and the Navy (and Air Force) doesn't want to have wasted that money just because the pilot didn't want to wear a helmet.
- Almost all of the pilots and RIOs across the film series have cool-sounding callsigns (Maverick, Iceman, Hollywood, etc.). In real life, a pilot will go through several, and will get a really humiliating and derogatory callsign early on. They can eventually earn their way to a less embarrassing one, but the really cool ones are almost exclusively reserved for senior aviators.
- One persistent gaffe that is constantly played up for Rule of Drama is the "hard deck" — the representation of physical ground thousands of feet in the air. Throughout the franchise, characters consistently disregard it in order to prove a point or teach a lesson, despite the fact that they would (in reality) be disciplined for disregarding a training rule. In the original film's first combat "hop", Maverick gets in trouble for pursuing Jester below the "hard deck" — when in reality, Jester would have been in far more trouble for using the hard deck to avoid a losing engagement. (Jester's attitude of "Better to Die than Be Killed," as expressed by his decision to avoid getting "shot down" by "crashing," is not precisely the attitude you'd look for from an Ace Pilot, much less an instructor.) In the sequel, Maverick and Rooster take part in a game of chicken by flying in the "rolling scissor" pattern (spinning around each other as they descend) far past the 5,000-foot hard deck, descending through 1,000-feet before each breaking off — in reality, both would not have had enough time to pull up, and would have either crashed or been forced to eject.
- In both films: An entire carrier deck crew would not turn out en masse to celebrate a plane returning, no matter how happy they were. It's particularly egregious in the sequel, as firefighting teams are still actively hosing down a crashed F-14 in the background, not 20 yards away from a giant celebration. If anything, the rest of the crew should be getting as far away as possible.
Top Gun
- One persistent gaffe that occurs throughout the film involves multiple characters who are seen wearing patches from every branch of the military except the Navy.
- The real TOPGUN is simply pass-fail, and there are no rankings or trophies to be won: due to the personalities of those accepted into the program, everyone would kill themselves pulling wild stunts to try and beat their fellow aviators, which was determined to be an unproductive way to produce trained (and/or living) fighter pilots.
- The real TOPGUN wasn't solely for Tomcat crews — it was intended for all fighter squadrons, including Marine Corps fighter squadrons, to send a pilot there. Therefore, there should have been quite a few F/A-18 Hornet pilots and/or Marines pilots in the class.note (It is, however, reserved for the Department of the Navy: Air Force jockeys have their own training program called "Red Flag".)
- Stinger's billet is apparently "Generic Superior Officer." His rank (Commander) should make him a squadron CO, but he acts like the CAG (who would be a Captain) and uses an Admiral’s stateroom as his personal office. Additionally, Stinger says, “You can tell me about the MiG some other time”, casually brushing off valuable intelligence data about the newest OPFOR aircraft (including a photo of the cockpit layout). In reality, fighter crews get debriefed *immediately* after landing by the ship’s intel department, not by squadron command.
- Since TOPGUN drew one aircrew from each squadron, Ice, Slider, Hollywood, and Wolfman shouldn't have returned to the Enterprise with Maverick. They should have returned to their original squadrons. Even if they were from different squadrons deployed on the Enterprise, they should have had no business telling Maverick's CO to ground him, nor should they have been in the same flight element on this sortie. Justified in the film by the fact that these pilots have just been empirically proven to be some of the nation's best and specially ordered to the Big E for an emergency mission (though in real life it would be extremely irregular to do this).
- It's also possible that while Ice and Mav are from different squadrons, they could still be assigned to the same ship. US Navy Supercarriers typically carried at least two F-14 Squadrons onboard, sometimes three. Mav joining the fight to help Ice makes sense as he's on Alert 5, and will get sent wherever there's trouble. What is odd is for Ice and Hollywood to be in the same element. In reality, it would've been someone from Ice's own squadron flying as his wingman. However, this was likely done to avoid having to create a new character whose sole purpose would be to get shot down.
- After Goose's death in a training accident, Maverick would in reality be immediately taken out of the program and sent into psychiatric evaluation. In the film, he is simply sent up repeatedly on Viper's orders once the investigation into the matter is complete, ostensibly in an attempt to "toughen him up" and get him motivated again.
- Instances of 1st class petty officers in dress whites serving coffee to officers while underway onboard a carrier border between the strange and the ridiculous. One, wardroom personnel on "cranking" duty would be very junior personnel. Two, they would almost never be required to wear dress uniforms in such duties; since they're working in the wardrooms and the galleys, they'd only get dirty for no good reason. Three, they're serving coffee. Every Navy officer and sailor from admiral on down knows to get their own coffee.
- The Guy in Back or RIOs - including Goose, Slider, Wolfman, Merlin and Sundown - yell a lot, and some look at a 360-degree radar, which have never existed on any US Navy fighter aircraft.
- None of the heads-up displays shown in the F-14s and so-called Mi G-28s represent real-life heads-up displays.
- The film misuses the term "bogey" for any enemy aircraft. In actuality, the term "bogey" is used for unidentified aircraft, and after identification, it's called either a "friendly" for friendly aircraft, "bandit" for non-friendly aircraft, or "hostile" for non-friendly aircraft that may be fired upon. In the US Navy's terminology, a non-friendly surface radar contact is called a "skunk".
Top Gun: Maverick
- Peter "Maverick" Mitchell has been serving for almost forty years. Considering that he was a Navy lieutenant (O-3) in 1986, he must have been commissioned in at least 1982, as it normally takes four years to advance from ensign to lieutenant. Assuming this movie takes place in 2019, the year it was originally meant to be released, he would have been serving for 37 years, give or take a few months, which is more than enough for the time in service requirement for promotion to captain (O-6). Admiral Cain says Mitchell ought to be a two-star admiral by that point. Navy captains who are not selected for promotion to admiral must retire at 30 years of service, because it's the law (though there are rare scenarios where one could serve past the mandatory retirement
). Only Ice's position as Commander, Pacific Fleet can explain Maverick's continued service in the Navy despite his unsuitability for promotion to the admiralty. - The film takes place mostly in San Diego, at NAS North Island (where Dagger Squadron is being trained) and NAS North Coast (where Iceman's office is). TOPGUN is currently based roughly 450 miles north of San Diego at NAS Fallon in Nevada, having moved there in 1996.
- When Cyclone and Warlock call Maverick back to train the pilots on the bombing mission, Warrant Officer "Hondo" Coleman is initially a supervisor at the Dark Star program, but he not only shows up at the training facility with Maverick, but also follows him onto the carrier to help with the mission itself. Despite his rank, Maverick doesn't have his own staff that accompanies him from place to place, so he either made bringing Hondo along a request to the admiralty, or (more likely in character) told him to hop in the car and come along for a fun mission and that they'd handwave the orders later.
- Despite the justification that Maverick is actually training TOPGUN graduates rather than current students for a combat mission, this film (and to a certain extent, the original) treats experienced aviators as being complete neophytes who need to have plenty of As You Know moments given to them (or rather, explained to the audience through Maverick's point of view).
- The mission plan, in spades.
- Despite the known presence of Surface-to-Air missiles, there is no effort to take them out of the equation, instead opting to only saturate the nearby airfield with Tomahawks to take it out of commission. Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) is not even mentioned, despite a quarter of American combat sorties in recent conflicts having been SEAD missions. It's quite possible that the Leyte Gulf was the only guided-missile cruiser available to help at this point (especially when the mission is moved up by one week), and that a choice had to be made to either target the SAM batteries or the airfield.
- The mission plan itself also defies every modern air warfare doctrine that's been established over the past few decades. The premise is that the enemy is using a "GPS jammer" over the target area, which would supposedly render fifth-generation fighter-bombers useless. This forces Maverick to instead come up with a plan for four older F-18s to fly in and do the job using lower-tech laser-guided bombs. For starters, the Navy's fifth-gen F-35s can just as easily carry and use those same bombs, no problem; but sending only four aircraft to perform such a crucial bombing mission - when the movie straight-up acknowledges that they need two consecutive miracles and can't even afford a single miss - is downright unthinkable. For comparison, the 1981 Operation Opera (on which this mission is loosely based) involved eight F-16s attacking an above-ground nuclear facility, six F-15s as air cover, an additional two F-15s for electronic warfare (which is not used in the movie at all), and a total of 60 other support aircraft including backup F-4 bombers and rescue helicopters - and this is just what the Israeli Air Force could manage to send given its limited resources! This also brings up another point, since the mission in the film is carried out with exactly zero air cover for the attackers. There isn't a bigger "no no" than that.
- During the first training sequence, the aviators are shown all walking out to the runway in full flight gear... before most of them go back to the ready room, still in their flight gear, and listen to the ensuing training runs with Maverick and pairs of trainees. This has been called out by former pilots as being ridiculous. Any pilot involved in training will be in their civilian jumpsuits and only need to suit up once they know for certain that they're going up. Moreover, Maverick's training sessions involve numerous Rule of Cool moments that don't adhere to any real-world training scenarios, such as Maverick sweeping his targeting reticule across the trainees' planes (which should count as a hit, but doesn't until Maverick's directly locked on them, alongside Hangman sweeping his reticule across Maverick without registering a hit) and high-risk maneuvers to break up a group formation.
- Maverick tries to conventionally train the pilots on the flight course, but they fail to complete the mission within its parameters. It's only when he's taken off the mission that he flies it himself — and proves that it can be done in an even shorter timeframe than he's been pushing for. If this were a real training exercise, the flight instructor would fly the course as early as possible to show the pilots how it should be done, and they would work towards achieving the parameters. Justified in that Cyclone is the one calling the shots here, and it is obvious that he doesn't want Maverick involved in the actual mission, only acquiescing after Maverick successfully demonstrates that it is possible to complete the course within the timeframe.
- Conversely, Cyclone's decision to change the mission parameters (before Maverick proves the course can be completed in 2:15:00) and have the pilots move at a much slower pace (3:00:00 to target), makes it a guarantee that fifth-generation fighters will shoot them down — in other words, a suicide mission. This would likely have got Cyclone pulled from duty and sent to psychiatric evaluation, if not dishonorably discharged. Not only would such a mission be a massive public relations disaster for the Navy, but it would be completely against standard U.S. military doctrine to throw pilots it had spent a significant amount of time and resources training (the best of the best) into a hopeless scenario. No other plan (i.e. drone strikes) is suggested once Maverick is pulled from the mission, and the film's only attempt to justify this is via Warlock (Admiral Bates), who is shown to not be completely onboard with Cyclone's decision, secretly rooting for Maverick to pull off the course in 2:15:00.
- Flare countermeasures are completely useless against radar-guided SAMs, as they're meant specifically to defeat IR-guided missiles. Realistically, the Dagger pilots would use chaff decoys instead, which are essentially packets of metal strips that reflect radar emissions. This is justified visually, since it would have been much harder for viewers to see chaff being released, and in reality, the Hornet releases flares and chaff simultaneously when triggered anyway.
- The film attempts to portray the Su-57 as faster and longer-ranged than the F-14 Tomcat (which is shown to be a glorified museum piece that Maverick and Rooster commandeer), ostensibly for Rule of Drama. In actuality, the Su-57's top speed is Mach 2.0. The F-14's is Mach 2.5. Were it not for the Su-57's missiles, it is highly likely that Maverick and Rooster would have outrun the former in any sort of realistic scenario. More to the point, the Su-57 is often slower than 4th or sometimes even 3rd gen fighters, because the fighters from back then relied on speed a lot more in lieu of stealth or electronic countermeasures.
- When Maverick runs out of missiles during the canyon dogfight, he moves his weapon selector switch from the SP/PH position to the GUNS position. The switch should've been moved from SW instead, SP/PH is used to control radar-guided Sparrow and Phoenix missiles, while SW controls the IR-guided Sidewinder missiles that Maverick was using. It's a very minor detail that's easy to miss, but it's worth mentioning here.
- The mission candidate pilots refer to Maverick as "Mitchell" or "Old Man" on a few occasions. The problem is, they do this directly to his face. He's still a Navy Captain, he outranks them by a full mile. The only proper way for them to address him is either as "Captain" or "Sir." A subordinate doing this to a senior officer would have resulted in an epic ass-chewing and a lesson taught to never make that mistake again. Referring to him by his call sign "Maverick" while he's flying is allowed.
