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SPOILER ALERT – This story contains Top Gun: Maverick plot points : In the opening moments of Top Gun: Maverick , Tom Cruise ‘s Capt. Pete Mitchell takes an an experimental hypersonic plane called “The Darkstar ” on an unauthorized test run. Those who’ve seen the trailer — or the movie, at this point — will recall a low-flying triangular aircraft blowing past a lonely guard post on the desert floor. In a half-second, the flyby literally blows the roof off the shack.

A flash of the scene in an early behind-the-scenes trailer set the aviation blogosphere aflutter — and not just because of the mind-blowing visual. The aircraft’s unusual shape raised eyebrows. Some posited that it could be the legendary SR-71 Blackbird , once dubbed “the fastest plane ever.” Topping out at Mach 3, the high-altitude reconnaissance plane could literally outrun missiles shot at it by Russian MiGs.

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Others guessed it could be something even more exotic: The near-mythical hypersonic SR-72, the Blackbird’s rumored descendant, which is designed to fly at six times the speed of sound.

Lockheed Martin had uncharacteristically announced plans for the plane in 2013. Not much more was heard about the so-called “Son of Blackbird” until Lockheed confirmed engine tests in 2017. Some reports have maintained the SR-72 could be “rolled out for initial flight demonstrations by no later than 2023.” Lockheed, in its original announcement, claimed the game-changer could be operational by 2030. Oh, and it pegged the development cost at $1 billion.

Not much more has ever been officially revealed about the SR-72. That, along with its game-changing speed, has only added to the plane’s mystique.

It was odd, then, that Lockheed CEO James Taiclet posted publicly on LinkedIn this month that the company’s ultra-secret Skunk Works, which handles many of its most boundary-stretching projects including the SR-72, “partnered with Top Gun’s producers to bring cutting-edge, future forward technology to the big screen,” including tech around “hypersonic flight.” He also shared a photo of himself at the film’s premiere.

Lockheed Martin Director of Communications for Europe, the Middle East and Africa John Neilson was even more explicit in a recent tweet writing, “Rumours that Top Gun: Maverick , in cinemas May 27, features a sneaky peek at what might be the @LockheedMartin SR-72, successor to super-impressive SR-71 Blackbird. This still photo from promotional materials seems to support that thinking.”

Rumours that ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, in cinemas May 27, features a sneaky peek at what might be the @LockheedMartin SR-72, successor to super-impressive SR-71 Blackbird. This still photo from promotional materials seems to support that thinking. I can’t wait #avgeek #wingfriday pic.twitter.com/PyAak69qOj — John Neilson (@flyingjok) April 29, 2022

So is it the fabled “Son of Blackbird” that’s featured in Top Gun: Maverick ? The answer is, “sort of.”

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer told military blog Sandboxx News that director “Joe [Kosinski] worked with Skunk Works and Lockheed [Martin] to design the plane that’s in there.”

Kosinski revealed that details of the plane are, indeed, taken “out of real experimental aircraft” from Skunk Works.

“For me, just being kind of an aviation buff, and always loving that world, the idea to give people a peek behind the curtain of secret projects…I worked with Skunk Works, which is the division of Lockheed, that actually makes these type of aircraft because I wanted it to feel as real as possible,” he told Comic Book Movie.com this week. “So, every detail of that is based on reality, the way the aircraft functions, the way it looks, all the switches, and stick are actually taken out of real experimental aircraft.”

And in the spirit of creating as many Top Gun: Maverick’s effects in the real world vs. the digital, “We built a full-scale model, a full-scale mock-up of the Darkstar aircraft that you see Maverick fly in the movie. Yeah, I just wanted to show the audience that the first few minutes definitely feels like a Top Gun movie, but once he gets in that jet, I do also want you to know that we’re telling a whole new story, and that sequence kind of helped set that tone up for the movie.”

A very good shot of the Darkstar is featured in Lady Gaga’s video for her song for the film, “Hold My Hand.” See it below.

“The reason it looks so real is because it was the engineers from Skunk Works who helped us design it,” the director told Sandboxx News. “So those are the same people who are working on real aircraft.”

So, did Cruise — or someone — actually fly a hypersonic plane for the film? The short answer is likely “No.”

Not only would the SR-72 — if a prototype actually exists — be prohibitively expensive to operate even on a blockbuster-level budget, bringing such a plane itself out into the open would have national security implications.

To that point, Bruckheimer made news earlier this month when he told Sandboxx that the Chinese government kept an eye on the plane used in the film.

“The Navy told us that a Chinese satellite turned and headed on a different route to photograph that plane. They thought it was real. That’s how real it looks.”

According to production documents obtained and verified as authentic by Deadline, the scenes involving the Darkstar were scheduled to be shot between November 7 and 9, 2018 out in the Mojave Desert at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, near Ridgecrest.

The Darkstar was filmed both inside and outside a hangar at China Lake, including VFX plate shots and drone shots of the hypersonic clone rolling onto the tarmac. The plane was housed outside over night, but under a “temporary hangar,” likely frustrating interested parties overseas.

If it had been visible, those interested parties might have noticed one crucial difference between what we know of the SR-72 and the plane that Cruise’s Capt. Pete Mitchell flies in the film: Lockheed’s plane is unmanned and has no windows, which would be a problem for a wow-factor aircraft in a film about naval aviators. One other big difference is that the Darkstar, being Tom Cruise’s plane, goes to Mach 10.

For an even closer look at Maverick’s Darkstar, inside and out, here’s a video review of the expansion pack for it which was just released in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

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Watch: Meet Darkstar, the Menacing Supersonic Jet in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

The stealth aircraft was built by lockheed martin and inspired by two existing designs., rachel cormack.

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It turns out a gorgeous 1973 Porsche 911 S wasn’t the only mechanical masterpiece in the box office hit Top Gun: Maverick .

Allow us to introduce the Darkstar. The stealth aircraft , which Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) pilots early on in the movie while carrying out duties for the US Navy, was built in partnership with Lockheed Martin and is the stuff of an aviation buff’s dreams. It could soon become a reality, too.

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The full-scale prototype featured in the film was based on the SR-71 Blackbird that Lockheed built in the ’60s. This long-range, high-altitude reconnaissance jet was capable of traveling three times the speed of sound. It was used by both the United States Air Force (USAF) and NASA for undercover missions before it was eventually retired in the late ‘90s.

The Darkstar was based on the SR-71 Blackbird.  Lockheed Martin

Lockheed eventually announced a futuristic successor to the Blackbird in 2013. The SR-72, colloquially referred to as the “Son of Blackbird,” is a hypersonic UAV concept designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The futuristic jet was also a source of inspiration for the winged weapon in the Top Gun sequel.

The production team worked alongside the Lockheed crew to create the perfect plane for the big screen. Replete with sleek lines, the Darkstar has a menacing silhouette just like the two Lockheed designs. It also has a realistic cockpit with all the right controls to give you the illusion that this thing really can fly.

“Through their design team we learned how to make the plane look angry, mean and insanely fast,” the film’s production designer Jeremy Hindle said in a Behind the Scenes clip.

While the SR-72 is still under development, Lockheed has previously stated that an SR-72 prototype could fly as soon as 2025 and enter service in the 2030s. The aircraft will be equipped with a hypersonic propulsion system that has the ability to blast the jet from a standstill to Mach 6. That makes the Son of Blackbird about twice as fast as mom. Oh, and it will also be capable of firing hypersonic missiles. Here’s hoping Maverick is available for piloting duties.

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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Top Gun: Maverick   shows off a new hypersonic jet called the Darkstar - but is it real? From the release of the film's first trailer, aviation enthusiasts have noticed Maverick's sleek black jet, theorizing as to its origins. As it turns out, the aircraft seen in  Top Gun:  Maverick 's intense opening scene may actually have a real-world relative.

Top Gun : Maverick  opens with Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) test-flying a jet that is referred to as the Darkstar. The aircraft is incredibly high-tech, sporting all sorts of bells and whistles, and even goes up to slightly over Mach 10. With most of  Maverick  being practical instead of CGI , many of the aircraft are either real or modified versions of real jets. However, due to the Darkstar's capabilities and appearance, some viewers have questioned the jet's origins.

Related:  Everything We Know About Top Gun 3

Top Gun: Maverick 's hypersonic Darkstar jet actually has some surprising real-life origins. The triangular black jet is incredibly similar in design to the SR-71 Blackbird, one of the fastest planes ever created. The SR-71 is capable of outrunning missiles and can get up to Mach 3. While the Darkstar is very similar to this jet, the SR-71 is only a partial inspiration for  Maverick 's Mach 10 aircraft. In fact, the Darkstar is actually based on a much cooler jet: the unreleased successor to the SR-71.

As reported by Deadline , aerospace and defense company Lockheed Martin actually did work on the film, consulting on the real jet fighter planes in  Top Gun: Maverick .  Maverick  director Joseph Kosinski revealed that the design for the film's planes (including the Darkstar) are lifted from experimental aircraft created by Skunk Works, Lockheed's advanced development program. So, with all that being said, it is incredibly likely that  Top Gun: Maverick  took inspiration from the unreleased hypersonic SR-72 when designing the Darkstar. The SR-72 is the follow-up to the SR-71, and it is designed to fly at six times the speed of sound. The development costs for the jet are expected to be over $1 billion, and Lockheed has said that it could be operational by 2030. Because of the SR-72's legendary status and immense power, the possibility that  Maverick 's Darkstar took inspiration from it is incredibly interesting.

While the Darkstar is modeled after the SR-72, Tom Cruise doesn't actually get to fly  one in  Maverick . Demonstrations of the SR-72 aren't expected to start until at least 2023, meaning that it isn't even confirmed if the jet is in a flyable state. Operating an SR-72 would also bring about national security concerns at a scale that wouldn't be worth risking for a movie. On top of all that, the SR-72 has no windows and is unmanned, which is clearly different from the Darkstar. While  Top Gun: Maverick 's  Darkstar jet is based on the SR-71 and SR-72, it isn't actually a flyable version of the legendary unreleased plane.

Next:  Top Gun: Maverick Ending Explained (In Detail)

• SR Originals
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That Darkstar in Top Gun: Maverick—Was it Real?

Actual engineers from lockheed martin created that fictional airplane. here’s how., meg godlewski.

The fictional Darkstar’s lines evoke two other Lockheed Martin aircraft: the SR-71 Blackbird and the Lockheed Martin F-35. [Courtesy: Lockheed Martin]

"He's the fastest man alive," 

This line is uttered in Top Gun Maverick when Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell achieves Mach 10 in the Darkstar—a  reusable hypersonic, piloted aircraft that is ostensibly a creation of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works—note the Lockheed Martin logo of the Skunk on the tail of the aircraft in the movie.  

I felt a surge of pride when I saw the familiar logo—my father worked at Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Projects—known as Skunk Works—for more than 30 years. Dad never told us what he did. He couldn't. He would go on work trips to “someplace in the desert.” Us kids were taught to say, "Daddy builds rockets," when someone asked what our father did for work. 

Skunk Works Goes Hollywood

Skunk Works—which got its name because the plant produced a strong unpleasant odor, especially on warm days—by definition is a place of secrecy. 

The skunk is the mascot of "Skunk Works," a term for Lockheed Martin Advanced Development that goes back to 1943, when engineer Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson led a team in Southern California tasked with designing a jet for the military. Because manufacturing space was impossible to find because of the war, the team worked out of a rented circus tent set up next to a plastics manufacturing plant.

• READ MORE: Pilots Will Love Top Gun: Maverick —It’s a Lot More Real

According to a spokesperson from Lockheed Martin,  Paramount Pictures approached the aerospace company in 2017 with a request for technical expertise in the production of Top Gun: Maverick.  

"Lockheed Martin Skunk Works designed and produced a conceptual reusable, piloted hypersonic aircraft, referred to as Darkstar in the film." she said. 

The fictional Darkstar's lines evoke two other Lockheed Martin aircraft: the SR-71 Blackbird —SR stands for Strategic Reconnaissance—the now retired, super fast design; and the Lockheed Martin F-35, also known as “the world's most advanced fighter jet.” 

• LISTEN: FLYING’s Top Gun: Maverick  Music Playlist

FLYING was told not to confuse Darkstar with the SR-72, a concept referred to as the “Son of Blackbird,”which is a construct ostensibly suggested by the media in 2013, but never confirmed as a concept by Skunk Works.  

Darkstar is movie fiction, the spokesperson explained, saying, "Darkstar is a hyper-realistic aircraft concept designed specifically for Top Gun: Maverick . Hypersonic technology is progressing and the work being done across Lockheed Martin today is laying the foundation for a Reusable Hypersonic Vehicle, such as Darkstar, to one day be possible."

• REVIEW: How Does  Top Gun: Maverick  Stack Up?

The fictional aircraft was five years in the making. The development team took it seriously, keeping in mind "the shaping, materials, and components that must withstand heat and environmental stressors caused by high-speed flight." 

In addition, Lockheed Martin "helped design realistic flight gear, shared artifacts for the set, and arranged site tours and demonstrations to support the effort. The team provided insights to drive realism into the storyline, serving as consultants throughout filming," the company’s spokesperson said.

Proud of Their Part in the Movie

Lockheed Martin has a webpage dedicated to information about Top Gun Maverick . There you will find more information about the project and a few of the Lockheed Martin designers who worked on it, identified only by their first names: Jim, Jason, Lucio, and Becky.

Jim is credited with the conceptual design. Jason and Lucio handled the task of turning the conceptual designs into a realistic aircraft model with a working cockpit. Becky, a mechanical engineer, worked with the movie team to build the Darkstar vehicle, including the functional cockpit. Throughout the filming process, her job was to keep the model structurally sound.

Jeremy Hindle, the movie’s production designer from Paramount, described Darkstar's design as "angry, mean, and insanely fast." 

In the movie, the Darkstar mission is never openly discussed. However, we are told that the government wants to pull the funding on the project because it hasn’t yet reached Mach 10. It is intimated that the test flight protocols—which set specific targets to reach and to go no farther than Mach 10—are short of Mach 9.

Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell bends the rules a bit to get “one last test flight.” Test flights involve a protocol where a target is set and achieved, but do not involve pushing the envelope. Maverick is cautioned not to make the flight—Mach 9 is 6,905.42 mph.

The closest a piloted aircraft has come to that speed in reality is the SR-71 Blackbird , which reached Mach 3.3 or 2,193 mph.

There is a dramatic sequence as Maverick dons his high-altitude flight suit and helmet as he prepares for the before-sunrise launch. The tension mounts as the aircraft climbs into the dawn sky, and the cockpit’s Mach number readout heads toward the targeted value. 

Is it possible to fly an aircraft as fast as Mach 9?

"Operating in the hypersonic flight realm is difficult,” the Lockheed Martin spokesperson said. “The film depicts both a notional aircraft and a notional flight test scenario. The pathfinding work being done today is vitally important. The notional scenario in the film does not represent today’s work."

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This wasn’t the first time Locheed Martin created a Darkstar. In the 1990s Lockheed Martin created the RQ-3 Darkstar, a high altitude, unmanned aerial vehicle designed for endurance, not for speed. The UAV did its first flight in March 1996. The project was terminated in 1999 because the aircraft did not meet expectations. 

Three remaining Darkstar UAVs are in museums—one is at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, one is at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the third is at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.

Perhaps…someday. Just as the flying scenes in the original Top Gun inspired generations to become military aviators, this movie will also inspire future generations of engineers.

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Lockheed Martin lifts lid on Top Gun's Darkstar hypersonic jet concept

Lauded for its compelling action sequences and exhilarating portrayal of next-gen aerial dogfighting, Top Gun: Maverick has quickly become a monumental success at the box office. But the producers couldn't have done it without leveraging the expertise of some of the world's foremost experts in all things aerospace, and that includes tapping into the minds of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works engineers to craft their physics-bending Darkstar hypersonic jet.

Without wanting to give away any of the plot's specifics, the Darkstar aircraft features early in the film as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (played by Tom Cruise) carries out his duties as a test pilot for the US Navy. The futuristic fighter jet is a jaw-dropping introduction to the hyperreal aesthetics of the film, but may also strike a familiar chord with aviation enthusiasts due to a likeness to one of history's most revered aerial vehicles, the SR-71 Blackbird.

When looking for some expert assistance in creating the Darkstar aircraft, the film's producers were pointed in the direction of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division, responsible for the SR-71, its forthcoming successor the SR-72 and the U-2 spy plane . This collaboration created a new outlet for expression for Skunk Works clandestine conceptual designers, in the sense that this particular aircraft design was one they could share with the world – as conceptual designer "Jim" explains in this video.

The division's engineers then turned these designs into a full-sized prototype aircraft with a structurally sound body and functional cockpit. The producer of the film says they lowered the aircraft a little to make it look sleeker and faster, but praised the "mind-blowing" design of the cockpit and compelling visuals it helps create in the film's opening sequences.

You can hear more on the collaboration from the film's producers in the video below.

Source: Lockheed Martin

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“Top Gun: Maverick” features one of the best edge-of-your-seat action sequences of the year as Tom Cruise’s Maverick takes the supersonic Darkstar aircraft on an unauthorized test flight, pushing it to reach a speed of Mach 10.

Production designer Jeremy Hindle worked closely with concept designer Daniel Simon to come up with a mockup of the aircraft that he says was “authentic and as real as possible.”

“We went through 47 versions before landing on the final design and, when completed, it was an enormous 70 feet long,” Hindle says.

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In working with the legendary Skunkworks, a division of Lockheed Martin is responsible such planes as the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter and the F-22 Raptor, Hindle had access to an incredible level of authenticity and detail. “The tiger striping on the nose of aircraft is an amazing detail that happens after months of testing,” he says, adding, “The cockpit contained real instrumentation and a prototype flight stick that Skunkworks loaned us.

See Hindle’s concept art below.

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The SR-72 timeline: From initial design to ‘Top Gun’s’ Darkstar

• By Alex Hollings
• November 30, 2023

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After recent rumors surfaced that the United States Air Force is testing a new high-performance spy plane developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, Sandboxx News decided to explore the possibility that the legendary hypersonic SR-72 may not only be real, but potentially heading toward service in the not too distant future.

Recently, Sandboxx News discussed remarks made by Vago Muradian, the editor-in-chief of the Defense & Aerospace Report , during an episode of the outlet’s podcast . During a conversation with Teal Group Senior Analyst J.J. Gertler, Muradian brought up the Air Force’s highly classified RQ-180 reconnaissance drone, before going on to state that the Air Force was already testing “a much more capable reconnaissance aircraft that is the product of the Skunk Works.”

“My understanding is that the program was re-scoped because it is that ambitious a capability that [it] required a little bit of re-scoping in order to be able to get to the next block of aircraft,” Muradian said.

With no further details to pull from, these remarks could potentially point to any number of secretive Special Access Programs (or SAPs, as classified efforts are commonly called), but through extensive research and several interviews, we believe these statements could indeed align with what we know about the SR-72 that Lockheed Martin was once openly developing.

For more context into Muradian’s claims and a thorough exploration of the turbine-based combined-cycle hypersonic propulsion system that was developed for the SR-72, we recommend reading that previous article . In this installment, we’ll delve into the known and alleged timeline associated with this aircraft’s public – and then covert – development.

Related: SR-72? Hints of a new Skunk Works spy plane reignite rumors of a Blackbird successor

The Air Force did not have an SR-71 replacement when the Blackbird retired

Legends of a faster, higher-flying replacement for the SR-71, commonly called the SR-72, first began to emerge back in the 1980s when the Blackbird first flew into retirement. Many argued then (and still do today) that the US wouldn’t retire the Mach 3 spy plane without an even more capable replacement already in operation. The unpopular truth, however, was that the SR-71’s massive operating costs combined with advancing air defense technologies led many to believe that spy planes were becoming a relic of the past and that the future was in orbit.

The SR-71’s first of two retirement decisions came in 1989, after what Washington Post reporter Patrick Tyler described as a bit of “last-minute horse-trading to apply declining defense budget resources to other Air Force and intelligence satellite programs.” Put simply, the high-flying aircraft’s perceived value was on the decline right alongside the defense spending that kept it airborne.

Further confirmation that a high-flying replacement didn’t already exist came in the aircraft’s 1994 revival and subsequent re-retirement in 1999, followed by another high-profile effort to bring the Blackbird back to duty in the early days of the Global War on Terror in 2001. If the Air Force already had a fleet of more capable spy planes in service, it’s unlikely these efforts would have gotten much, if any, traction.

But the SR-71 program’s zombie-like inability to die also serves as evidence for America’s lasting need for an Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft with the Blackbird’s unique high-speed and high-altitude capabilities. This was a point not lost on the aircraft’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.

Related: Hypersonic firm Hermeus proves their Mach 5+ jet engine works

Development on the SR-72 began in 2006

In 2006, the firm secretly began initial design work on what would become the SR-72, but it wasn’t until 2013 that the effort first broke cover. In early November of that year, Lockheed Martin unveiled the SR-72 concept with a media push that included several interviews with Brad Leland – Lockheed Martin’s Hypersonics program manager and the engineer who had already been heading the effort for seven years by that time.

“Hypersonic aircraft, coupled with hypersonic missiles, could penetrate denied airspace and strike at nearly any location across a continent in less than an hour,” Leland was quoted as saying in a Lockheed Martin press release that has since been taken down. “Speed is the next aviation advancement to counter emerging threats in the next several decades. The technology would be a game-changer in theater, similar to how stealth is changing the battlespace today.”

According to Leland, his SR-72 team included 20 Lockheed employees and he was confident that they could build the twin-engine hypersonic aircraft in “ five to six years ” for under a billion dollars. The program had already zeroed in on the idea of using a turbine-based combined cycle engine (TBCC) thanks to the previously canceled HTV-3X program that had similar hypersonic aims. Lockheed Martin partnered with engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop just such an engine with the stated aim of reaching Mach 6 – which Leland said was based on heat-withstanding material costs rather than limitations of their proposed propulsion system.

“The turbine, which works well up to Mach 2, and the scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) work well at Mach 4 and above. By making those work together down at Mach 3 – below Mach 3 – that’s really the key,” Leland told USNI News at the time.

While details about the scramjet were not forthcoming, Leland did confirm that the two turbofan engines in consideration to serve as the turbine basis for their TBCC propulsion system were the Pratt & Whitney F100 and the General Electric F110. Both are afterburning high-performance engines that had already seen service in American fighters like the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon.

“We’re looking at dual flow-paths, an over and under configuration,” Leland said, highlighting the intended layout for the turbofan and scramjet.

This approach diverges from ramjet-centered hypersonic TBCC efforts like today’s Chimera engine made by Atlanta-based hypersonic startup, Hermeus. Chimera uses a turbojet placed in front of a ramjet, so at high speeds, the turbojet itself becomes the blocking body that slows airflow to more manageable subsonic speeds. Because a scramjet operates with supersonic airflow, Lockheed couldn’t place the turbofan in-line with the scramjet and instead positioned it either above or below it to allow for unobstructed airflow. 

You can see this concept demonstrated in the 2022 movie Top Gun: Maverick when the fictional Darkstar transitions from turbofan to scramjet modes, which goes to show how established the concept already was. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, of course, designed the fictional Darkstar for the movie.

Leland said Lockheed Martin had a “very solid design” for the aircraft, but would take at least three more years (and an influx of cash) to prove they could marry a turbofan to a scramjet in a truly functional manner. That would then lead to a single-engine flying demonstrator, which he said would be about the size of an F-22 Raptor and could be flying by 2018. A twin-engine operational aircraft based on that design would follow suit by 2030. 

During this 2013 media push, Lockheed Martin launched a page for the SR-72 on its website that included a render of the aircraft in flight and links to press releases and media coverage about the new highly publicized effort.

Related: 5 secretive new warplanes the US is developing for the next big fight

Lockheed Martin was open about the SR-72’s progress by 2015

In 2015, the SR-72 once again drew headlines after a Popular Science cover story devoted to the program offered new – and arguably inaccurate – details about the aircraft’s progress. According to this article, the turbine-based combined cycle engine Leland had discussed in 2013 was now meant to operate in three distinct “modes” – first flying under turbojet power before transitioning to ramjet power, and then finally, to the scramjet.

Turbojets, it’s worth noting, are a different and older type of jet engine from the turbofans Leland described in 2013, but it’s likely this word choice was a simple editorial error. As for writing that the engine employed both ramjet and scramjet modes – that may have been a creative description for the complex transition from turbofan to scramjet power, highlighting the use of a diverter between inlet flow paths to slow inflowing air to subsonic speeds within the scramjet (allowing it to temporarily function like a ramjet).

This concept is more traditionally called a dual-mode scramjet , and has become the de facto expectation for any combined cycle propulsion system aiming to bridge the velocity gap between turbofan and scramjet optimum operating speeds. Dual-mode scramjets also played an important role in Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Rocket-Based Combined Cycle (RBCC) engine designs from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Turbojets notwithstanding, Lockheed Martin proudly updated its SR-72 webpage to reflect this new cover story, including an image of the magazine cover alongside the previously published quotes from Leland.

The company also included this statement, doubling down on the timeline Leland had laid out two years prior: “A hypersonic plane does not have to be an expensive, distant possibility. In fact, an SR-72 could be operational by 2030.”

Lockheed Martin also released a promotional video in late 2015 that included a brief clip of what appears to be its SR-72 design along with the phrase, “Global Strike.” This may have been the first time Lockheed Martin formally acknowledged the idea that its hypersonic SR-72 wasn’t strictly oriented toward reconnaissance missions, and instead, would be designed to deliver ordnance as well.

Related: Lasers won’t save us from hypersonic weapons

In 2017, Lockheed Martin said the engine was ready to fly (and according to eyewitness reports… already was)

In 2017, Lockheed Martin once again courted media exposure for the SR-72 program with claims that ground testing of its combined-cycle hypersonic engine had been underway since 2013 and the technology was finally mature enough to be placed into a real aircraft.

“We’ve been saying hypersonics is two years away for the last 20 years, but all I can say is the technology is mature and we, along with DARPA and the services, are working hard to get that capability into the hands of our warfighters as soon as possible,” Rob Weiss, Lockheed Martin’s executive vice president and general manager for Skunk Works, told Aviation W eek in June 2017.

Weiss claimed the Skunk Works was “getting close” to beginning development of the single-engine full-scale Flight Research Vehicle (FRV) that he also described as about the size of an F-22 Raptor. This single-engine demonstrator was set to start flying by the early 2020s, and Weiss once again affirmed 2030 as the target for a twin-engine platform to enter operational service.

But just a few months later, in September of 2017, eyewitnesses reported seeing a small-scale SR-72 technology demonstrator (or Flight Research Vehicle) flying over Palmdale, California. This is where Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Division as well as the Air Force’s classified aircraft manufacturing facility, Plant 42, are located. It is also the same location where Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider was spotted making its first test flight just weeks ago.

These reports prompted Aviation Week to reach out to Lockheed Martin’s Orlando Carvalho, executive vice president of aeronautics, at the time. Carvalho was not forthcoming with confirmation but seemed to go out of his way not to deny the eyewitness reports either.

“Although I can’t go into specifics, let us just say the Skunk Works team in Palmdale, California, is doubling down on our commitment to speed,” he told Aviation Week in 2017.

“Hypersonics is like stealth. It is a disruptive technology and will enable various platforms to operate at two to three times the speed of the Blackbird… Security classification guidance will only allow us to say the speed is greater than Mach 5.”

While this statement was meant to offer little in the way of details, it was the first time Lockheed Martin officials seemingly acknowledged that the program may not longer be limiting the SR-72’s intended speed to Mach 6. “Two to three times” the speed of the Blackbird, while potentially just casual hyperbole, would suggest a top speed of Mach 6.4 at least, and potentially as high as Mach 9.6 or higher.

Related: New footage shows B-21 Raider’s historic first flight

In early 2018, Lockheed Martin officials said the SR-72 was already flying

With rumors swirling about a subscale technology demonstrator already flying with Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rockeydyne’s combined-cycle engine onboard, Lockheed Martin officials opened 2018 with a hypersonic bang.

In January 2018, Lockheed Martin’s Vice President of Strategy and Customer Requirements in Advanced Development Programs, Jack O’Banion, spoke at the SciTech Forum, held by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Florida. During the event, O’Banion projected an artist’s rendering of the SR-72 and discussed the aircraft as though it already existed and had been seeing successes in testing.

“Without the digital transformation, the aircraft you see there could not have been made,” O’Banion told the audience. “We couldn’t have made the engine itself — it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago. But now, we can digitally print that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself, and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation.”

These statements about the TBCC engine could be attributed to the testing we know Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne conducted between 2013 and 2017, but when pressed about these statements by Bloomberg’s Justin Bachman , O’Bannion doubled down.

“The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds, with reliable engine starts,” he stated unequivocally.

But just two months later, a speech delivered on the opposite side of the world would seemingly thrust the SR-72 effort back into the shadows, where it’s remained ever since.

Related: Why Russia’s Mach 3.2 MiG-25 couldn’t catch the Blackbird

The SR-72 program suddenly went dark just as the hypersonic arms race began

On March 1, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered what has since become an infamous speech , in which he announced what he claimed to be the world’s first operational modern hypersonic weapon, the Kh47M2 Kinzhal, along with Russia’s plans to field the nuclear Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). This address has since been seen by many as the onset of the modern hypersonic arms race .

“No one has listened to us,” Putin exclaimed. “You listen to us now.”

Of course, we would later learn that the Kinzhal missile – like the Russian military as a whole – was not nearly as capable as Putin claimed, but at the time, these new weapons seemed to present a serious threat to the United States. And worse still, it was a threat the US had no means to match.

After leading the world in hypersonic technology with programs like NASA’s X-43 and Boeing’s X-51, the US shifted its focus away from advanced systems meant to deter neer-peers throughout two decades of the Global War on Terror. With no publicly disclosed American hypersonic weapons programs in development, let alone in service, Putin’s speech seemed to suggest that America’s old Cold War foe had managed to leapfrog the US in this realm of advanced weapons technology.

And just like that, the SR-72 program disappeared .

Within days of Putin’s speech, as the world’s media exchanged headlines about hypersonic missiles, Lockheed Martin quietly took down the SR-72 webpage that had been up for five years to that point and redirected the URL to its press releases page. All press releases about or even mentioning the SR-72 program were purged from their press release archive.

It was as though the entire effort, which to that point included at least 12 years of work from at least 20 Skunk Works engineers, a partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne on a propulsion system that underwent at least four years of testing, and what its lead engineer Brad Leland described as “a lot of company money,” just vanished into thin air.

You can now only access Lockheed Martin’s SR-72 page using the Wayback Machine (an internet archive that saves old websites). From March 2018 forward, you will find no mention of the SR-72 anywhere on the entire Lockheed Martin website.

Related: US announces successful test of its first fight-ready hypersonic missile

After going dark, hints about the SR-72 Flight Research Vehicle still occasionally bubbled to the surface

Despite the SR-72 effort going dark, a video released in 2021 by the Air Force’s Profession of Arms Center of Excellence offered us what may be the first real glimpse of the single-engine SR-72 Flight Research Vehicle Lockheed Martin had previously claimed could be delivered by 2018.

A brief clip of what appears to be an uncrewed demonstrator bearing a striking resemblance to renders of Lockheed’s SR-72 can be seen for a few fleeting seconds near the end of the video. The aircraft does not appear to be CGI-generated, and while it could have been nothing more than an expensive prop, that seems like an unlikely expense for a short clip in a public affairs presentation. 

Of course, it also seems odd that the Air Force would reveal such a classified effort in a promotional video, but based on Muradian’s comments we already discussed, the program needed to be re-scoped after the delivery of the first test articles.

Revealing this brief snippet of the SR-72 FRV (if that is, indeed what is seen in the video) could have been meant as a winking message to national adversary nations already fielding hypersonic weapons the United States publicly had no means to match. Or, if the program was in question before being re-scoped, the brief reveal may have been seen as a minimal security risk.

If real, this brief clip shows the effort was ongoing, or at the very least, had resulted in delivered test articles by 2021.

Related: Why America’s new NGAD fighter could be a bargain, even at $300 million each

China allegedly thought Top Gun’s Darkstar was real… Did they have a good reason?

In 2022, Top Gun: Maverick flew into theaters with an unusual new aircraft in tow – an experimental hypersonic technology demonstrator powered by a turbine-based combined cycle engine designed and built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works.

And that’s not just a line in the script – it’s reality.

“The reason it looks so real is because it was the engineers from Skunk Works who helped us design it,” the film’s director, Joseph Kosinki told Sandboxx News before the movie’s opening. “So those are the same people who are working on real aircraft who helped us design Darkstar for this film.”

The resulting Skunk Works mock-up was so realistic, producer Jerry Bruckheimer told us, that it allegedly even managed to fool China’s intelligence apparatus.

“The Navy told us that a Chinese satellite turned and headed on a different route to photograph that plane. They thought it was real. That’s how real it looks,” Bruckheimer first told Sandboxx News. 

Re-orienting a spy satellite is no small matter . These immensely expensive orbital platforms can only carry a limited amount of fuel onboard and there is currently no way to refuel them in orbit. This means that any time a satellite is forced to expend fuel to adjust its orbit or orientation, it directly shortens its operational lifespan.

If Bruckheimer’s story is true, it seems unlikely China would sacrifice the precious fuel of a high-end spy satellite over a movie they already knew was in development.

But, China may have been willing to expend some valuable fuel to get a peek at a real aircraft that its intelligence apparatus already knew was in development or testing… Maybe even one that bore a striking resemblance to the Darkstar itself. 

Top Gun: Maverick began filming in May of 2018 – eight months after witnesses first reported seeing an SR-72 demonstrator flying over Palmdale, four months after Lockheed Martin executive Jack O’Banion said their SR-72 FRV was flying, and just two months after the program went dark.

Related: Spy satellites aren’t nearly as all-seeing as you think

Lockheed Martin uses Darkstar to not-so-subtly hint at real capabilities

To be clear, Bruckheimer’s spy satellite claim may have been a bit of creative storytelling meant to sell the movie to airplane nerds like us, but claims about the realism depicted by the Darkstar were not limited to Hollywood. Lockheed Martin soon rolled out a marketing campaign of its own that was ripe with not-so-subtle hints about just how feasible the technology might be. 

On March 12, 2023, Lockheed Martin tweeted an image of the SR-71 in a hangar along with a caption that said, “The SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest acknowledged crewed air-breathing jet aircraft.” 

Highway to The Danger Zone #RealTopGun The SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest acknowledged crewed air-breathing jet aircraft. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/62Xqr62gze — Lockheed Martin (@LockheedMartin) March 12, 2023

The word acknowledged stands out for good reason, as it suggests there may be faster record-holders that have yet to be disclosed to the public. Things got even juicer when Lockheed Martin put out a press release that said this: “With the Skunk Works expertise in developing the fastest known aircraft combined with a passion and energy for defining the future of aerospace, Darkstar’s capabilities could be more than mere fiction. They could be reality…”

It was evident that Lockheed Martin was not shying away from comparisons between Top Gun’s Darkstar and its own SR-72 program, though, to this day, there is still not a single mention of the SR-72 anywhere on their website, even amid the flurry of Darkstar-related promotional materials. 

In another statement that has since been removed from Lockheed Martin’s Darkstar materials, the company seemed to even say the quiet part out loud:

“Darkstar may not be real, but its capabilities are. Hypersonic technology, or the ability to travel at 60 miles per minute or faster, is a capability our team continues to advance today by leveraging more than 30 years of hypersonic investments and development and testing experience.”

And this brings us up to the present day, and the recent claims made by Vago Muradian. In a future article, Sandboxx News will compare what we learned from this timeline to Muradian’s comments and other known technological breakthroughs, before drawing our conclusion.

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Darkstar Mockup Used For ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Unveiled In New Behind-The-Scenes Video

The full-size mockup was built by the Skunk Works to be as realistic as possible for the filming of the Darkstar scenes.

One of the topics most discussed after the release of “Top Gun: Maverick” is the Darkstar hypersonic prototype aircraft: was it only Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)? Was there a model of some sorts used for the filming? The existence of a full-scale mockup was confirmed about a week after the movie was released, when Lockheed Martin disclosed further details about the company’s involvement in the film, and now there is even a behind the scenes video of the mockup itself.

“In our story we find Maverick pushing the envelope of human performance in aviation. Working in partnership with Lockheed Martin and Skunk Works, we were able to create Darkstar, our full scale prototype for the film”, says Top Gun: Maverick’s director Joseph Kosinski. “We based the design on the fastest aircraft, the SR-71, which Lockheed built in the 1960s. The team wanted to go beyond that.”

As you might already have seen in the film, the Darkstar has sleek aerodynamic shapes, with small wings and canted vertical twin tails. The aircraft is built around a turbine-based combined cycle propulsion system , with two turbojet/low-bypass turbofan afterburning engines and two scramjets.

“We lowered it a little bit. It also made it look a little sleeker and faster,” says Jeremy Hindle, the film’s Production Designer. “Through their design team, we learned how to make the plane look angry, mean, insanely fast.” Kosinski even added “it felt like something that could really fly”.

Even if those characteristics might be similar to the SR-71 Blackbird , as referenced by Kosinski, many have already noticed a close resemblance of the Darkstar with the concept images of the SR-72 hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft.

While we don’t know for sure if a SR-72 prototype has ever been produced, at least some features of the Darkstar come from real aircraft; actually, one of these comes straight out of a real aircraft currently being developed by the Skunk Works: the X-59 QueSST . The cockpit, in fact, has no forward visibility and Maverick relies on a synthetic vision system to see what’s in front of the aircraft.

As we said in a previous story, the design went from a concept to reality thanks to a team of conceptual designers, engineers and aircraft model developers , who brought together their expertise to quickly have a realistic aircraft forebody model with a working cockpit, while also keeping it structurally sound throughout filming. The model they built was so accurate that China was reportedly fooled in believing that it was a real experimental aircraft and even reoriented a spy satellite to take photos of it.

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Tom Cruise’s latest move offers peek at secret jet

June 10, 2022 - The Darkstar hypersonic jet in Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster movie, “Top Gun: Maverick”, offers a peek at what might be the SR-72 – the super-secret experimental spy plane under development by Lockheed Martin.

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To help director Joseph Kosinski and Paramount Pictures, engineers from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works partnered with the Top Gun production team to design what might be a variant of their hypersonic SR-72 plane with a few modifications to make it look even cooler on the big screen as both a full-sized physical mock-up and an airborne CGI version. Conceptual renderings of the SR-72 released over the past few years bear striking resemblance to the Darkstar and speculations have swarmed around it since the $170 million film went into pre-production way back in 2017. In real-life, the SR-72 has yet to officially take its first flight, which is due to occur sometime next year. It has been rumoured that the plane would have an advanced propulsion system revolving around a turbine-based combined cycle, which is the fusion of a modified fighter turbine engine with a dual-mode ramjet. This type of hybrid engine would launch the Darkstar jet towards the heavens at the staggering speed of 7,400km-per-hour!

• Top Gun – The Need for Speed (Lockheed Martin)
• 'Top Gun: Maverick' got help from Lockheed Martin engineers to create its hypersonic SR-72 Darkstar plane (Space.com)
• Skunk Works Helped Create The Darkstar Jet For Top Gun: Maverick (The Drive)
• Lockheed Martin Confirms They Helped Create the Darkstar Plane in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (TechTimes)

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’s’ DarkStar a real jet? It’s more likely than you think

Ameya Paleja

Renditions of DarkStar shared by Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works

Top Gun: Maverick has been in the theatres for a week now and if you still haven’t managed to get your tickets to a screen, you must do it at least this weekend. Luckily, this article has no spoilers, so you can just read on and find out more about the people behind the experimental hypersonic plane  Darkstar. 

The Tom Cruise-starring sequel opened to rave reviews last week, and who does not want to watch the best airplanes from close-up. Most of the fighter planes are aircraft that you know and have read about. Apart from the Cruise’s escapades, what one also remembers from the movie is Darkstar.

Even if you haven’t watched the movie, this aircraft features in the trailer with a lone man standing. 

Is the plane real? 

Top Gun: Maverick features the F-18 Super Hornets, the main character in the movie, apart from Cruise, of course. Last week, we reported how much the movie’s producers paid to get a seat on these planes . While those aircraft are the real deal, the roof-blowing DarkStar isn’t. 

Defense manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, whose F-35C Joint Strike Fighter also finds some footage in the movie, has a special division called Skunk Works that usually takes up the challenge of conceptualizing the next to the impossible plane. 

As Lockheed Martin claims on its website, the Top Gun: Maverick team called them when they were looking for a mean flying machine, and the Skunk Works put together a small team to bring Darkstar to life. 

The Skunk Works team went from conceptualizing the aircraft to making a realistic model with a working cockpit and keeping it structurally sound throughout the filming. 

As always, the job is easier said than done, and the team went through multiple design iterations before the world saw Darkstar on their screens. 

But what about its capabilities? 

Without delving into the movie plot, one can say that even though the plane of the screen isn’t real, the capabilities it showcases aren’t completely fictional either. 

Hypersonic planes have been on the priority list of the U.S. military for quite a while now. Lockheed Martin’s SR-71 Blackbird was the fastest fighter aircraft ever built. But since the aircraft retired in 1998, the military has been looking for its rightful successor. 

The SR-72, also known as ‘ Son of Blackbird, ‘ has reportedly been in the works and will make its first flight in 2025. Its top speed is expected to be Mach 6, enough to blow off rooftops, and if you look at some of the renderings of the aircraft, you will definitely see similarities with DarkStar. 

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We also know that the aircraft is meant for  intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions but will also have strike capabilities. The only difference is that with increased improvements in automation, the SR-72 is expected to be an unmanned aircraft. 

But that does not bode well for a movie franchise about aircraft pilots, does it? 

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

Ameya Paleja Ameya is a science writer based in Hyderabad, India. A Molecular Biologist at heart, he traded the micropipette to write about science during the pandemic and does not want to go back. He likes to write about genetics, microbes, technology, and public policy.

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Lockheed Martin Details Experimental Darkstar Aircraft from Top Gun: Maverick

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Darkstar may not be real, but its capabilities are. Hypersonic technology, or the ability to travel at 60 miles per minute or faster, is a capability our team continues to advance today by leveraging more than 30 years of hypersonic investments and development and testing experience,” said Lockheed Martin.

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The behind-the-scenes story of shooting those crazy Top Gun: Maverick flying sequences

Tom Cruise insisted that his costars be filmed in actual flying jets.

Senior Writer

How do you convincingly shoot scenes in which actors look like they are flying in jets with extreme G-forces contorting their facial features as the planes perform extreme aeronautical maneuvers? You get the actors to do it for real. That, at least, was the conclusion of Tom Cruise when he began to think about how to shoot Top Gun: Maverick (out May 27), the action sequel in which his titular flying ace must prep a younger generation of pilots for a highly dangerous mission.

"It's the craziest idea," says Glen Powell , who plays one of the pilots Maverick trains in the film. "You kind of don't believe it. It was like: Okay, this is a really cool idea but it's never going to work."

Yet work it did, with Cruise, Powell, and other cast members believably looking in the film like they are really in the skies because they really were in the skies.

"It was a lot of work," admits Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski . "It was very tedious and difficult at times, but the footage speaks for itself."

When filmmaker Tony Scott directed the original 1986 Top Gun , he too had hopes of shooting actors in the air but was thwarted when cast members began throwing up whenever they were taken for a ride. "Though I was never really doing it, I learned the mechanics of operating the plane," Top Gun star Val Kilmer recalled in his 2020 memoir I'm Your Huckleberry . "We went up in the jets several times and... I have to report that I was the only one who didn't regurgitate, which, given the gut-wrenching drops and spins of those ferocious flights, was no mean feat."

In the years after Top Gun made him a global star, Cruise became a pilot himself thanks to Sydney Pollack, who directed him in 1993's The Firm and gave the actor flying lessons as a present. Cruise was determined to depict the aerial sequences in Top Gun: Maverick as realistically as possible, an ambition shared by Kosinski.

"I've always loved aviation, I was making model airplanes from a young kid and studied aerospace in school," says the director. "Every movie's a challenge, you know. I love that. If you don't have butterflies going into a project, it's probably not the right thing. I always want to look for something new to try and, yeah, this was a tough one but I had Jerry [Bruckheimer, the film's producer]. I had Tom, I had a great cast, and a story that we really believed in. So we gave it our best shot."

Cruise had played a military-school student in the 1981 film Taps and, together with costars Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton, attended a training boot camp ahead of the shoot. Inspired by that experience, the actor decided to put his fellow cast members through a training regimen which would allow them to be filmed in flying jets looking like actual, non-vomiting pilots.

"That was Tom's expertise," says Kosinski about Cruise's insistence that the actors be properly prepared for the shoot. "He's a pilot, and he's done aerobatics, and he was in the first Top Gun . He knew that they wouldn't be able to get in the plane and hold their lunch down and be able to do these scenes, so he created a training program that they all went through."

The actors began the schedule flying in single-engine Cessna 172 Skyhawks before moving on to the Extra 300, which is capable of more acrobatic maneuvers, finally graduating to L-39 Albatross single-engine high performance jets, which prepped them for the F/A-18s in which they would be filmed during the shoot.

"Tom used part of the budget of this movie in order to ensure that we were comfortable and able to emulate a real-life fighter pilot," says Powell. "There's no way without that regimen — a thing that he didn't have on the first movie — that we would be able to pull off these performances. There's full scenes up in the air and we would have been passed-out bodies just going for a ride."

Did Powell throw up over his plane? "Not on the plane," says the actor. "You've got bags obviously. I never missed a shot in the bag."

While the pilots were preparing to act like real pilots, Kosinski was figuring out how to shoot them doing so. "[That] took a lot of preparation," says the director. "We had to work for about 15 months with the navy to figure out how to get cameras in the cockpit. We ended up getting IMAX-quality cameras into the cockpit with the pilots and the actor."

During the shoot itself, Kosinski had the strange experience of "directing" actors who were many miles away during the actual filming.

"I'm there, with the actor, when they're getting in the jet, I'm setting the cameras up, making sure all the angles are exactly what we need," says the filmmaker. "But once that jet pulls out onto the runway, they're gone for the next hour or two. As soon as they land, we take the footage, we went into the debrief, we put it all in and watched it together. We give them notes on what didn't work, and we'd cheer when something was great, and then we'd give them notes and send them up again in the afternoon. It was a very unique way to direct, because it was a lot of prep and a lot of rehearsal. And it was very tedious — you're only getting a minute or two of good stuff every day. But it's the only way to get footage that looks like this."

The flight sequences in the finished film are certainly thrilling (EW's Leah Greenblatt praised Kosinski for "sending his jets swooping and spinning in impossible, equilibrium-rattling arcs"), aided by the fact that the cast's faces can be seen enjoying and enduring the aerial acrobatics.

"You just feel the peril for everyone in the movie in a different way," says Powell. "If you were using CGI, audiences are very smart, they can tell the difference. When you are whipping through canyons at 650 knots, you can't fake that, and you can't fake the Gs on actors faces."

So, if Top Gun: Maverick is a success, can Kosinski imagine overseeing more of such sequences in a sequel?

"It's all about the story for Tom," says the filmmaker. "If we can figure out a way to tell what Maverick's up to next, who knows?"

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Tom Cruise returns to the danger zone in the triumphant 'Top Gun: Maverick' (Review)

It's fighter jets and fist-pumping heroism in director Joseph Kosinski's superb sequel.

For those of us who've made it around the sun forty or more times, one of the touchstone cinematic experiences of the '80s was Paramount Pictures' patriotic portrayal of daredevil Naval aviators in "Top Gun." 

Directed by Tony Scott (Ridley Scott's late brother) and released on May 16,1986, "Top Gun" was the macho movie that cemented Tom Cruise 's legacy as a megawatt movie star that lit up the screen at Mach 2 with his hair on fire in an F-14 fighter jet.

Now the sequel we never thought would happen, " Top Gun: Maverick ," is hitting the box office afterburners from director Joseph Kosinski with a stellar $156 million domestic opening weekend and Cruise reprising his role as the charismatic icon, Lt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.

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Just when we were beginning to lose all faith in the Hollywood dream machine, "Top Gun: Maverick" delivers a triumphant crowd-pleaser that hits every emotional note and never descends into nostalgic sentimentality or rides on the famed coattails of its 1986 predecessor. This marks the biggest opening weekend of Cruise's 41-year acting career and breaks a 15-year-old Memorial Day record set by "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End." "Maverick" is seemingly everywhere on 4,732 screens across America, making it the widest release in Hollywood history.

Co-starring with Cruise is a squadron of talented actors including Miles Teller ("Whiplash," "The Offer") as Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, the son of "“Goose," Maverick’s best friend and co-pilot who perished in "Top Gun" after an ejection seat malfunction during a flame-out flat spin. But make no mistake about it, this is no formulaic rehash serving as a 21st century cash-grab.

The organic plot finds Maverick 35 years older and trying to integrate into the digital age as a relic of another era. The cocky test pilot is called back into action after pushing the envelope a bit too far in a stealthy experimental spy plane , where he’s ordered to shepherd an inexperienced flock of Top Gun graduates towards new heights of advanced combat in FighterTown USA.

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While acting as strike team leader for a suicide-type mission to destroy a rogue nation’s uranium factory in a perilous mountain setting, Maverick finds closure and purpose while inspiring a younger generation to reach for their personal bests in the most dangerous of conditions.

This just feels like the right film for our divided country and its thrilling dogfights are the perfect temporary antidote for rampant inflation, stock market malaise and stratospheric gas prices. When was the last time you heard the sweet music of a clapping, cheering audience at the multiplex? If we're being honest, it's been a while. 

But how refreshing is it to have your faith restored like a baptismal awakening, cleansed in the transcendent waters of smart filmmaking where emotional payoffs arise from carefully drawn characters in an engaging screenplay?

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The adrenalized script by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie offers a full spectrum of emotion and beautiful pacing as we watch Tom Cruise do what he does best - be a certified movie star in the old tradition. Jennifer Connolly as Penny Benjamin, Maverick’s bar-owning love interest, anchors the romantic side of the film and the pair produces palpable fireworks and glassy-eyed chemistry until the final sunset scene in a soaring P-51 Mustang. 

Astute aficionados of the 1986 flick will remember her character mentioned when Maverick and Goose are getting scolded by their carrier commander and he tells Maverick of his high speed pass with one admiral’s daughter. Goose then reminds Mav that it was indeed Penny Benjamin.

Director Joseph Kosinski ("Tron: Legacy," " Oblivion ") has crafted an instant classic by channeling the late Tony Scott’s style of riveting flash cuts, musical cues, and penetrating close-ups that made the original "Top Gun" so revolutionary. Here the F-18 Hornets’ low-altitude runs and intense aerial combat, deftly edited by Eddie Hamilton, are exhilarating to the point of inducing vertigo and will leave you as breathless as that haunting Berlin ballad from the first film.

Rounding out the top-notch cast are Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Monica Barbaro, and Manny Jacinto. Thankfully, Val Kilmer provides a touching extended cameo that adds tearful pathos to the sequel, playing Maverick’s ex-rival and now ardent supporter, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky who is now commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

From the familiar melody of Harold Faltermeyer's "Top Gun" theme, to Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone," and Maverick streaking down a runway on his old Ninja motorcycle, "Top Gun: Maverick" is a necessary trip down memory lane that kicks off the summer movie season on the highest of notes.

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Jeff Spry is an award-winning screenwriter and veteran freelance journalist covering TV, movies, video games, books, and comics. His work has appeared at SYFY Wire, Inverse, Collider, Bleeding Cool and elsewhere. Jeff lives in beautiful Bend, Oregon amid the ponderosa pines, classic muscle cars, a crypt of collector horror comics, and two loyal English Setters.

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What Planes Will Tom Cruise Fly in 'Top Gun: Maverick'?

It looks like Maverick is flying the F/A-18 Super Hornet this time.

The Top Gun sequel is finally happening.

Rumors had circulated that greatest flying movie ever made would be getting a sequel. Tom Cruise ratcheted up the excitement yesterday by posting the following image to his Instagram account, with the hashtag #Day1 to indicate the first day of filming the new movie, called Top Gun: Maverick .

So how might a Top Gun movie look this time around?

Well, 32 years have passed since Maverick and Iceman played volleyball and flew fighter jets. The original Top Gun featured Tom Cruise as Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, flying an F-14A Tomcat fighter with Ltjg. Nick “Goose” Bradshaw as his Radar Intercept Officer. The two took off from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and flew against a mysterious enemy, most likely Soviet pilots, flying the new MiG-28 fighter.

Three decades later, none of those things exist. The F-14 Tomcat was retired from U.S. Navy service in 2006 . The USS Enterprise held out of a sequel as long as it could, but the carrier was decommissioned in January 2017 after more than 40 years of service. The Soviet Union is no more, and the MiG-28 never was—it was a made-up airplane for the purposes of advancing the film’s plot. (Real airplanes from the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau, like the MiG-29 “Fulcrum,” have odd numbers.)

What we know so far is that Maverick is a flight instructor in the sequel, and that his new ride is the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighter, probably the two-seater “F” version to give him someone to talk to in the movie. Unlike the Tomcat, which at the time was a strictly air-to-air fighter, the Super Hornet has an air-to-ground role, opening up the possibility that the pilots of Top Gun 2 could take on enemies on the ground.

What about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the latest fighter jet to join the U.S. military? The Navy is purchasing 273 F-35C models, which feature larger wings, slightly longer range, and strengthened landing gear designed to take punishing takeoffs and landings. Eventually the Navy will field 20 squadrons of F-35C, with two out of four fighter squadrons on every carrier equipped with the stealthy F-35.

The F-35C is a fundamentally different plane than the the original F-14A, or even today’s Super Hornet. It relies on remaining hidden to kill and survive, and ideally shoots down enemy planes from beyond visual range, without the enemy knowing it is there. That's a smart way to fight a war, but it makes for a lousy Top Gun movie. The Super Hornet, on the other hand, could still get into aerial knife-fights with the enemy. (Also, the F-35C is a single seat plane, meaning no clever, cocky cockpit banter.)

The original T op Gun featured aerial encounters and dogfights against Soviet pilots over the Indian Ocean. If the Top Gun sequel is modeled after real-life events, we could see its flyboys mixing it up against Russian pilots over the Baltic Sea, with the new Sukhoi Su-57 fifth-generation fighter as the bad guy jet. The Su-57’s stealth could introduce a lot of dramatic tension as American pilots struggle to stay one step ahead.

Another possibility is the sunny South China Sea, where Maverick could fly against Chinese carrier-borne J-15 fighters of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Alternately, they could fly in the East China Sea against Chinese Su-35 fighters or even the new Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter. This is somewhat unlikely from a marketing perspective, however, as China is a major movie market and making Beijing the antagonist is a surefire way to prevent Top Gun 2 from hitting Chinese theaters.

Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News , and others. He lives in San Francisco.

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