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.