Did the latest trailer for Top Gun: Maverick just confirm that drones are the new enemy?
Well, no confirmation, but it did nudge us strongly in that direction.
Drones have long been rumored to be the primary enemy platform in this successor movie to the 1986 hit starring Tom Cruise. In this latest incarnation, Cruise reprises his role as a top naval aviator, call sign “Maverick,” this time tasked with training a new batch of pilots for a new mission.
But until the Super Bowl TV spot was released on Sunday, we didn’t have much in the way of evidence that drones were the threat. All we had was a good indication that Iran was the enemy: The concluding shot in the first trailer showed an F-14 Tomcat flying over snow-capped mountains, and Iran is the only nation that continues to operate F-14s as part of its air combat arms. Iran also happens to have the snow-capped Elburz mountain range.
Incidentally, we know China isn’t the enemy: The Chinese Communist Party unfortunately has too much control over both Hollywood and Top Gun: Maverick.
Anyway, between the 20-second and 23-second marks of the latest trailer, we hear various radio calls during Maverick’s flight as the F-18 Super Hornet jets traverse narrow, snow-capped mountain canyons. We hear the words, “Here they come! Bogeys in the air! Bogeys in the air!” Then, we hear the most interesting line, “They’re everywhere!”
The nervous “They’re everywhere!” stands out because it suggests the pilots have been surprised by an overwhelming enemy force and are significantly outgunned. But it stretches military reality to a breaking point to assume that Maverick’s flight had been surprised and outmatched by F-14s. Not only are U.S. naval aviators some of the very finest in the world, but the F-18s avionics and weapons systems would also allow the flight to engage F-14s beyond visual range with a significant advantage. Equipped with advanced AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array radar systems, the Super Hornets would see the F-14s first. This is true even in the context of the mountainous terrain. Unless ambushed, Maverick’s flight would not be close to visual range, which would allow the F-14s to offset their at-range vulnerability with their close-in maneuverability.
The trailer shows Maverick’s flight pulling high-G maneuvers at low altitude. This suggests that the Americans are engaged in defensive dogfighting, using low-altitude flying to minimize their optical and sensor visibility — perhaps using the terrain to absorb near-miss missile launches. (We see a missile explode among flares at the 18-second mark.) But were F-14s the primary threat, even at visual, dogfighting range, Maverick’s flight would seize the initiative to separate and destroy them. The F-14s might be good dogfighters, but Super Hornets under the control of U.S. naval aviators are better.
So what could surprise the F-18s and force them into highly defensive dogfighting? One answer that fits is drones. Allowing for some leniency toward Hollywood with respect to realism, drones are small enough to mitigate their individual radar signatures against stand-off engagement, and they could be swarmed in sufficient numbers to ambush Maverick’s flight and put him at a disadvantage.
Anyway, watch the latest TV spot below.
