Fighter to be flown by Cruise?
Rocket assisted Zimmer-frame?
The occasionally rumoured Top Gun 2 movie - sequel to the seminal* '80s aerial action flick - is to go ahead. Reports have it that the project, known to have Tom Cruise aboard already, now has a scriptwriter: and more importantly, the real star, the jet fighter to be flown by Cruise, has been selected. F-35B in flight test. …
Geeze! The real problem with a Top Gun 2 featuring the F-35 is that an UAV fighter can out turn a manned aircraft because it does not have to limit the g-forces to levels a human can endure. Even back in the 70's, when I worked in Aerospace on fighter & missile system design, we all lamented how having a meat bag on board forced the plane us to cripple the planes performance from what the airframe limitations were. The "next big one" will show that manned fighters are like that scene in War Horse where the British Cavalry charge the German machine gun emplacement - stupid and anachronistic.
The problem with airframe design is simple:
You can do one thing really well or lots of things really cr#p..
An F-16 (Falcon) for instance is quite happy pulling a sustained 9G turn with a fleshy one at the controls thanks to a 30 degree reclined seat. The much newer Raptor (F22) seat is adjustable as well tilting back a staggering 55 degrees so expect it can perform some eyeball sinking turns. However if pilots could be re-trained to lay flat during flight then that g-force tolerence figure goes up beyond 12 times normal gravity into the edge of the envelope where one could rip the wings off a conventional looking airframe.
You hit the nail on the head.
"into the edge of the envelope where one could rip the wings off a conventional looking airframe."
An airframe designed with all the things required for meatbag.,, lifesupport, additional fuel, ejector seats, space to move around, manual flight controllers etc etc.
True. Besides, for real mass appeal, they should have the Osprey inadvertantly ingest Shrillary Clinton. Now, that type of bitter, evil bird ingestion would really trash an engine!
Other than that minor quibble, I think Lewis has a grade A plot on his hands! I'd pay money to see that! Well, if they called it "Hotshots, The Threesome" and got Charlie Sheen in the lead role instead of Cruise, that is.
Hey, I'm not knocking her abilities, I actually thought she would have been a better choice of Prez than Obambi if only because she had some bitterness to fall back on. After all, she had shedloads of real experience when Obambi was still "community organising".
Anyway, who else could the Osprey ingest? Michelle Obama would probably make the engine choke and spit her out. Tim Geithner would slip through untouched, leaving just a slick layer of oil on the engine blades. Leon Panetta would be so out of touch he'd still be looking for the Prez in the Oval Office whilst Obambi was being loaded onto the Osprey. And Eric Holder would be too busy trying to secretly sell the Osprey AF1 to some Mexican drug cartel, just to prove that all drug smuggling is actually the fault of American cargo aircraft manufacturers....
Bruckheimer and Simpson were the Shakespeare and Marlowe of the ADHD age, makers of movies for those whose attention span was regulated by the speed of a thumb on a TV remote. (Seductions at Hollywood speed; courts of inquiry that take about two weeks; etc.) And I greatly fear that hundreds of young men who could not carry a tune in a bushel basket will again be butchering "That Loving Feeling" in American barracks across the world.
I must say, though, that it was a movie well suited to Tom Cruise's abilities.
It looks the Navy has issues to recruit pilots since the F-14 was replaced with far inferior planes, starting with the slow and short-range F-18E, and now the slow, little armed F-35?
Don't get me wrong, the F-35 could be a good attack plane for a first strike in a heavily protected environment, but it will never be a long-range "fleet defender" and dogfighter for air superiority. One you fired your missiles and the combat get to close range, stealth capability are useless and while it could be maneuverable, it is still slow and with too little power - especially if the fighter you have to face is from the Su-27 family.
While with the F-14 the US Navy had one of the top fighters of the time, they no longer have. Any movie with one of the actual planes will be just a parody of the old one.
I'm sure the F-35 is superior to the F-14. It is however a shame the carrier-borne variant of the F-22 was canceled. That's the plane I picture as the replacement to the F-14. But as someone noted above. Drones will soon replace fighter pilots.
Sure, it has better color LCD screens and faster chips. The F-35 is still a son of that "littoral warfare" philosophy that dumbed down naval aviation using large, expensive carriers to bring around short-range airplanes with less combat capability. It will work as long as they face far inferior opponents (Lybia, for example). It will stop working the day they will have to face long range, well armed and fast planes. They won't reach any "littoral zone" to bring warfare to.
As just before the Vietnam war the Air Force was relying too much on missiles, now they're relying too much on stealth capability. The day that capabilty is broken (F-117, anyone), the plane has nothing else to offer and can't take advantage of pure power to overcome opponents.
Anyway "stealthness" is of little use when you have to defend and enemies close in rapidly, you have to turn your radars on, and put yourself in a good position to fire.
After one hundred years US Air Force was able to obtain what other Air Forces were able to force in most other countries, reduce naval aviation to a lesser force.
Whoever has voted this down needs to see the exact intercept distance for protecting a carrier group.
It has been increasing in line with the range and letality of Russian supersonic cruise missiles. Presently 150-200 miles is the "though shall not pass" line and no enemy aircraft armed with modern anti-ship missiles should be allowed past that because if they get to 75nm they can launch (75miles is very optimistic for a safety margin, but let's put it at that).
So the poster has a point of sorts. F14 (500 miles air-to-air engagement radius) even without a set of drop tanks is to some extent more useful than an F18 (400 miles). I am not even going to mention F35-B and Harrier here as they stand very little chance if the opponent is properly armed. They will be watching the missiles sailing by and taking out ship after ship. Nice viewpoint though.
...not. Funny how many would be experts there are here on the abilities on the Typhoon, F35 and even the Hornet. Stick to the games guys...
If you think the Raptor is the be all and the Typhoon is last generation then you are sadly mistaken. Both excellent platforms in the right hands and both equally capable of matching anything else out there.
Totally agree. What most of the El Reg commentards seem to miss is that the difference between 2 jets in the modern era is avionics, not airframes. Turn and burn all you like, even be as stealthy or not as you like, what really matters is the avionics fit. The US put very good avionics in all their aircraft, but don't export their top draw avionics. The UK also puts very good avionics in their aircraft, but doesn't invest enough, so often half the fleet isn't equipped with the best gear.
Watching 2 Tornado F3s consistently take out a pair of F/A 18s in dogfights just because the avionics in the Tornados were so much better that they had better situational awareness than the F/A 18s was very interesting. In 1v1 the Tornados didn't have a hope and consistently lost because the airframe was so bad. But in 2v2 and higher the F/A 18s didn't have a hope. We really won't know how good Typhoon, F35 and F22 are until we start to see results of NATO exercises leak out involving all these types.
Top Gun is one of my favorite movies. It was from the era when Tom Cruise was cool and before he turned into a complete arse-clown. Hopefully the producers will see the light that TC is spoiled goods from yesterday and will dump him for a better actor.
Oh, and give us real action footage like the original movie. Not Hollywood CGI pretend stuff.
What about the rest of them......
Tom Cruise is a cocktail waiter, he losses his confidence and cannot make cocktails anymore. meets beautiful girl and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a race car driver, he loses his confidence and cannot race cars anymore, meets beautiful girl and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a fighter pilot, he losses his confidence and cannot fly fighter planes anymore, meets beautiful girl, and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a sports agent, he losses his confidence and cannot promote his clients anymore, meets beautiful girl and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a soldier, he losses his confidence and cannot be a soldier anymore, meets beautiful girl and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a farther, he losses his confidence and cannot be a good farther anymore, meets hideous aliens and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a policeman, he losses his confidence and cannot be a policeman anymore, meets beautiful girl who spends her life lying in a huge bath of water with her sisters and regains his confidence.
Tom Cruise is a lawyer and has a beautiful wife, he losses his confidence and his wife and cannot be a lawyer anymore, reconciles with his wife and regains his confidence. Take's out company of mafia lawyers.
Tom Cruise is an actor, it is doubtful he can act but he has a nice smile and has a really hot Australian wife, he losses his ability to act and his wife and cannot be an actor anymore, meets beautiful girl, regains his confidence and converts wife to religious cult.
Paul Newman is a pool player, he losses his ability to play pool because he is a well known pool hustler, he meets Tom Cruise and regains his ability to hustle pool games, Tom Cruise meets beautiful girl and regains his morality about pool playing.
We have to assume the new female lead will be the sexy (and smart/confident but having to fight male oppression) will be Old Tom's on screen daughter.
She will have a Fighter pilot Boyfriend who Daddy Tom dosn't approve of and therefore must win the approval in order to be able to marry the young'un.
This allows us the following;
A) sexy time with young woman + boyfriend
B) tension and conflict with daddy Tom
C) reconciliation using the power of blowing the shit out of baddies in a joint mission with Tom (hes the only one who can save the day!) and the future husband (hes proposed by this point... or about to)
D) happy ending! with joint buzzing of the tower.
Cant really see how we can get Tom into the cockpit yet. but it could be bring-your-future-dad-to-work-day aboard the Nimitz.
Oh, and baddies have to be traditional Hollywood "terrists" of the week.
Have we moved passed the foreign enemies yet and onto the domestic ones!?
OH!! and of course that has to be said in the movie too.... to protect America against all enemies etc. etc. etc.
Is this movie going to be another merkin military wankfest, where our perfect-toothed hero saves the world for free-dam and dee-mac-racy, by being a maverick loose cannon, disobeying orders from the suits and generally kicking the ass of a numerically and technologically superior enemy?
I suppose the reality of flying unmolested over third world countries with no air defences and pushing a button which kills some random civilians several miles away over the horizon, might not extract the same level of whoops and hollers from the cinema going public.
There's grumbling in the Pentagram about the escalating costs of this boondoggle (including "acquisition malfeasance" -- http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/02/dn-procurement-chief-knocks-early-f35-production-020612 -- starting production before adequate test flights) and some have even whispered "kill it", so I'm guessing Lockheed is trotting out a star vehicle to get people who "oooh, ahhh" over the CGI jetscapades to call their congresscritters to save Tom Cruise's plane. Clever bastards, I'll give 'em that.
So you have the whole plot revolving around two naval aviators going nuts because somebody cancelled the Air Force's bomber project ?
Why ? The US Navy is a serious rival to the USAF and this permeates the culture (e.g. at 1990's Ottawa Intl Air Show - Me: Who has the larger air force? Navy or Air Force? Naval Pilot: They do, but they fly mostly transport planes.)
RCAF Brat
We had the ultimate drone technology that flew right into the hands of Iranian Mullahs!
The "real" Maverick would have found his way back to the base or destroyed his ride before it was captured!
I hope the human pilot is not completely taken out of the cockpit!
Besides, "drone" pilots may have to content with Charlie Blackwood at her older form.
Whereas "real" pilots even at Maverick's current age always mange to get the chicks! :-)
Captain Ross "Rusty" Aimer
(UAL Ret.)
CEO
Aero Consulting Experts
(We Keep Your Production Airborne & REAL!)
http://www.AeroConsultingExperts.com