For the unfamiliar, Top Gun: Maverick is set 30 years after the original film. Maverick is still a naval aviator, highly decorated, but with an uncanny ability to get into just enough trouble to keep from getting promoted out of the cockpit. He is the test pilot for the hypersonic Darkstar scramjet. We’re never told explicitly what Darkstar’s mission is, but it is noted that the government wants to pull the funding for the project in part because it hasn’t yet reached the contract spec of Mach 10 (7672.691 mph).

Maverick suits up for a test flight. He is cautioned to obey the parameters of it and not to exceed Mach 9 (6,905.42 mph). But this is Maverick we’re talking about. He pushes the aircraft to Mach 10, destroying it in the process. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Maverick’s contemporary who has advanced in rank, saves his friend’s career by sending him to the Top Gun school at NAS North Island, where he is charged with training the next generation of naval fighter pilots while battling his inner demons—one of the nuggets is the son of his backseater, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who was killed in the first movie.

There is a lot of fancy flying in the movie, and it has generated hours of debate in FBOs and online from pilots and aviation enthusiasts who wonder if Darkstar is real and not the Queen Mother of a scale model movie prop.

(Reality check: The closest a piloted aircraft has come to Mach 10 is the SR-71 Blackbird designed by Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson during the Cold War that reached Mach 3.3 or 2,531.988 mph.)

According to Fred Bell, vice chairman of the Palm Spring Air Museum, Darkstar represents the sixth generation of aviation stealth technology. The conceptual design for it—not to be confused with a drone project of the same name—was created by Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs.

• READ MORE: Taking a Transcontinental Flight in the Hypersonic Darkstar, Virtually

Lockheed Martin Meets Hollywood

In 2017 Hollywood producers who wanted a hypersonic design for the movie approached Lockheed Martin asking for a conceptual design—could anything go that fast? They knew aviators and other “rivet counters” (the polite term for the people who pick apart aviation movies as though their parentage has been insulted) would be unmerciful in their criticism unless some effort was made to at least embrace the laws of physics and reality.

The Lockheed Martin designers came up with an aircraft that looks very much like a cross between two other of its models: 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.”

In the movie, Darkstar has some dramatic and moving scenes. For example, on the morning of the test flight the camera pans the aircraft in sort of a walk-around and shows a skunk image on the tail. The skunk is a trademarked by Lockheed Martin ADP, which is also known as Skunk Works, because in the 1930s the company was located in Southern California next to a plastics plant that gave off a horrible stench. Super-secret aircraft were developed there, and the term “skunk works” remains synonymous with a place where such technology is developed.

Secrecy is still a big deal, even with movie airplanes. The Darkstar designers are identified only by their first names: Jim, Jason, Lucio, and Becky. According to information provided by Lockheed Martin, when the movie premiered, 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, and kept the model structurally sound during the filming process.

This is no scale model, noted Bell.

“It measures 40-feet wide by 70-feet long,” Bell said. “It is a dagger shaped aircraft with a tremendous amount of detail. On the landing gear the serial number of the tires are stamped on the wheels. The cockpit has an articulating canopy that opens and inside you will see a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works control stick.”

The aircraft even has panel covers that read, “REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT,” and on the tail there is the famous skunk standing confidently on its hind legs with his front paws folded on its chest. 

Darkstar belongs to Lockheed Martin. According to Bell, the company arranged to have the aircraft trucked to the museum and then its technicians and those of the museum reassembled it. When the aircraft was fully together, it was celebrated with a dual water cannon salute. It will be on display near other Lockheed Martin aircraft.

According to a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, there are no plans to take Darkstar on the road for a tour as the size and complexity of moving it makes that untenable. If you want to see the aircraft up close, make the trip to Palm Springs to see the Darkstar Rising Experience. This includes a comprehensive design-to-cockpit tour, and talks from guest speakers as the museum explores the developments in stealth technology.

“We will have people talking about how the aircraft was created and how it was used in the movie, and will talk about stealth technology in general—where it came from and where it is going,” Bell said. “It’s no longer enough to be fast.”

Details, including ticket prices, can be found here.

The schedule is as follows:

February 24: The making of Darkstar

March 1: Behind the scenes: Darkstar comes to life, making movie magic

March 20: The next generation of stealth

March 27: The next generation of hypersonic aircraft

All viewings will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. PST.

The post Movie Star Airplane Appears in Palm Springs Aviation Museum appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The flight I’ll be taking will be from Miramar (KNKX), the former location of the Top Gun academy outside San Diego, to Joint Base Andrews (KADW) outside of Washington, D.C. If I do everything right, the 2,000-mile trip should take just 25 minutes.

The airplane in the movie was roughly based on the Lockheed SR-72, which is supposedly in development, though all the details about it—including whether it truly exists or not—are top secret. According to reports, at least, the SR-72 is meant to be the replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird, which was retired in 1998 and was the fastest operational airplane in the world.

• READ MORE: Crossing the English Channel in a Blériot XI

Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works” actually worked with the filmmakers of Top Gun: Maverick to ensure the full-scale mock-up they constructed looked like a realistic hypersonic airplane, similar but not identical to the SR-72. There is a story—perhaps true, perhaps not— that when the filmmakers produced their version of the Darkstar, China repositioned a satellite to fly over and take a closer look, believing it was real.

Because of the wind, I’m taking off to the west and will need to turn around to head east. That will add some time to my flight. Rotating from Miramar’s runway at 180 knots, with afterburners on, I pitch up 10 degrees and raise my landing gear, accelerating toward Mach 0.9.

Once I reach Mach 0.9, I stay below the speed of sound by raising pitch to 20 degrees, while turning to the east. That’s San Diego Harbor below me.

To break the sound barrier and accelerate quickly, I invert the airplane to go into a dive. The reason I invert is to avoid excessive negative G-forces by pulling back instead of pushing forward on the stick to nose down. I’ve just broken Mach 1.0.

Now that I’m supersonic, I quickly roll back upright and resume my 10-degree climb, gradually accelerating to Mach 3.0. I’m already over the California desert, nearing the Salton Sea ahead. Until I reach Mach 3.0, I’m still using my conventional jets with afterburners.

A normal jet engine works by compressing air through a series of spinning blades then adding fuel to burn it and make it expand rapidly out the back. Before it exits, the hot air turns a turbine that powers the compressor in front. At extremely high speeds, a compressor isn’t needed because the ramming force of the oncoming air itself is sufficient to compress it. A ramjet dispenses with both the compressor and the turbine to drive it.

• READ MORE: Canada’s Rugged, All-Metal National Airplane

In a ramjet, however, the air is slowed inside the engine to below the speed of sound. In a scramjet—or supersonic ramjet—the air flowing through it remains at supersonic speed and can produce much higher speeds as a result. A scramjet, however, needs to be already moving at a very high speed to work. So once I reach Mach 3.0 (I’m at 2.81 and rising), I can flip the switch and ignite the scramjets.

The exhaust ports for my red-colored afterburners close, replaced by the white-hot heat of my scramjets. The airplane accelerates very rapidly now.

I’ve also climbed very rapidly. I level off at 135,000 feet, a little higher than I planned, but no matter. I’m nearing Mach 6.5 now, over 4,800 mph.  I think I’m over Arizona, but to tell you the truth, I’m not 100 percent sure. I’m just following the magenta navigation line on my screen. You can see the nose and edges of the airplane heating up from the friction of moving so fast.

I’ve leveled off again at 127,000 feet and reached Mach 9.1, my cruising altitude. It’s possible to reach Mach 10 by going higher, but I’ve got enough on my hands already.

The flight is going very quickly. I’m already over the Great Plains. You can easily see the curvature of the Earth.

The mission of the SR-72, like the SR-71 and the U-2 before it, would be to conduct reconnaissance at an altitude too high and speed too fast for anyone to catch or shoot down. While these missions are now mostly performed by satellites orbiting the Earth—or, more experimentally, by high-altitude balloons—some argue that a high-altitude, high-speed “spy plane” is still needed to fill gaps in coverage at a moment’s notice.

• READ MORE: A Fanciful Flight in the ‘Spruce Goose’

I haven’t been able to recognize very much along the way, but I’m pretty sure St. Louis is about 24 miles below me.

How hot does the airplane get? That’s classified. But the skin of the SR-71, traveling at a mere Mach 3.0, reached an average of 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The cockpit window of the SR-71 was made of quartz and 1.25 inches thick to survive these temperatures.

About 200 miles from my destination, I turn off the scramjet, pull the throttle back to idle, and begin my slowdown and descent. I’m dropping through 75,000 feet here and slowing to Mach 4.4, basically just gliding down with minimal power.

The first time I flew the Darkstar, I waited too long to begin decelerating. As I descended into the thicker atmosphere, I was going too fast and the airplane broke up from the stress (oops, sorry taxpayers). This time I overcompensated in the other direction and began my deceleration a bit too early. So I ended up skimming over the Appalachians at a slower speed, adding about 15 minutes to my flight time. Better than disintegrating, I suppose.

My approach speed should be between 150 and 200 knots. To fly level at these low speeds, the Darkstar has to keep its nose pitched up about 10 degrees. As I cross the Potomac River with Washington, D.C,. in the background, just to my north, I’ve lowered my wheels for landing at Andrews Air Force Base.

This is a little tricky. I have no forward view and can barely see out my side windows. I have to rely entirely on the digital image on my screen to land on the runway. The little airplane marker on the screen shows my current trajectory. I need to keep it pointed near the start of the runway, while keeping my speed around a steady 150 knots.

It wasn’t the softest landing, but I ended up safe and sound. My total time across the country by scramjet was about 50 minutes. Taking off to the west added about 10 minutes, and beginning my slowdown and descent too early cost me another 15. Still not bad from coast to coast.

Some hope that scramjets can someday be used for passenger transport, putting any destination in the world within a 90-minute flight. But for now the applications remain purely military. Hope you enjoyed the flight.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the official Top Gun Maverick Expansion Pack for MSFS2020, along with airports and sceneries produced by fellow users and shared on flightsim.to for free.

The post Taking a Transcontinental Flight in the Hypersonic Darkstar, Virtually appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Top Gun: Maverick opened nationwide May 27, delivering up epic flight scenes. The butt-puckering flight sequences included in the sequel to Top Gun, more than three decades in the making, were made possible because of the creation of the Cinejet, a specially designed aerial camera platform based upon an Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatros, as well as the Embraer Phenom 300 and Airbus AStar used as aerial photo platforms.

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

Less than a month after it was released, the movie has raked in $402 million and counting, earning it the distinction as the highest grossing movie of the year, according to Deadline, a Hollywood breaking news site.

The financial success, it seems, is that for most viewers, the movie script has a bit of everything: love, loss, regret, reflection, conflict, plus airplanes, aileron rolls, and afterburners.

For one movie goer, however, Top Gun: Maverick was a “two-hour monstrosity.”

• READ MORE: Review: How Does Top Gun: Maverick Stack Up?

In a nearly 750-word review on the social network Letterboxd,  reviewer “Brett” gave the movie half a star out of five stars. According to the site profile, Brett has watched 1,565 films, at least 26 of which he has reviewed so far this year. The film chapped his derrière so much that he said it rated lower than the 1.5 stars he bestowed upon the 2019 Hollywood production of Cats (which, OK, fair enough) and with the same rating contempt as the all-around horribly racist 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation.

• READ MORE: ICYMI: Tom Cruise Takes James Corden on ‘Top Gun’ Flight

“Even if one can ignore the rabidly bloodthirsty nature of this movie, it is still absolute garbage,” Brett said of Maverick. “The morals of this story are, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest: soldiers should ignore orders to stand down, and you should take actions without thinking about them. Our heroes follow these lessons throughout the story and are constantly rewarded for it. It is a child’s understanding of bravery and honor, coated in thick layers of some of the most painfully sentimental slime that Hollywood has ever produced.”

Brett took issue with his interpretation of the plot: “a bombing run over an Iranian nuclear facility near completion.” It was a story that stood in contrast with reality, Brett said, and would have set Tom Cruise and company up for what he deemed an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war.”

The politics of the film should not be ignored, Brett added.

“It is not a fun blockbuster nor an escapist fantasy, but a clear and unequivocal celebration of U.S. militarism,” he said. 

• READ MORE: U.S. Navy, Air Force Banking On Top Gun: Maverick Recruitment Boost

“Top Gun: Maverick is a 131-minute long advertisement for death,” Brett concluded. “Aggressively unoriginal, wildly irresponsible with its messaging, historically revisionist…This is a masterwork of propaganda in defense of some of our nation’s worst traits, and it’s an enormous success,” Brett said. “I left the theater depressed and forlorn.”

In the barrage of criticism, however, one aspect of the movie was spared Brett’s barbs: the soundtrack. 

The 1986 Top Gun soundtrack, which featured generational hits by Berlin and Kenny Loggins, continues to evoke emotion among the pilot set. (FLYING curated a list of special songs from the soundtracks of Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick, as well as music that celebrates the unique aircraft and characters in both films.)

• READ MORE: FLYING’s Top Gun: Maverick Music Playlist

Are Brett’s criticisms warranted? We want to hear from you.

The post Meet Someone Who Really Didn’t Like <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i> appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

On Monday, I took my family to see Maverick because I figured they would enjoy it and I wanted to hear their impressions of the film and their opinions on whether the decades-spanning story holds together. I also simply wanted to see it again.

Our outing plus my repeat views contributed to the movie’s reported box office tally of $156 million, a record for a Memorial Day weekend release.

It is no surprise that the film is popular. It has the elements of success: love, loss, regret, reflection, conflict, denouement. Add airplanes, aileron rolls, and afterburners to the mix, with a lot of exhaust nozzles flaring and tensing, and you have a good case for the perfect cinematic product. Indeed, both my flight instructor and my favorite middle-school English teacher should love this film.

• READ MORE: U.S. Navy, Air Force Banking On Top Gun: Maverick Recruitment Boost

Circumstances also helped propel Maverick. Pent-up, pandemic-era demand for big-screen entertainment in general, and the public’s enthusiasm sometimes bordering on obsession over Top Gun in particular promised a big audience. The film was supposed to debut in 2020 but COVID-19 thwarted that plan. It was a temporary obstacle, though, and after more than 30 years of waiting, another two seemed only to enhance the excitement. Let’s just say it was easily worth the wait.

• ICYMI: Tom Cruise Takes James Corden on ‘Top Gun’ Flight

This is especially so for pilots, who have been among Top Gun’s biggest fans and harshest critics. Anyone who knows anything about modern air combat will tell you that for decades fighter weapons technology has allowed aircraft to engage enemies from ever-greater ranges, often beyond the horizon. So why, back in 1986, were F-14s mixing it up with “bogeys” at distances less than a city block? Was this a World War I dawn patrol?

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

Realistically, we have to admit that downing enemies more than 100 miles away with Phoenix missiles would make for one seriously boring movie. I recall listening to an interview with retired Rear Admiral Pete Pettigrew, a well-known adviser on the original film, who talked about how combat aircraft actually fight versus the way they battled on screen. Eventually, he came to terms with the directorial license needed to make the flight sequences appeal to a general audience. Airplane movies cry out for close-ups.

Pettigrew also joked that he felt the film would be fine as long as it didn’t somehow morph into a musical. I suspect the admiral knows that Top Gun arguably is a bit of a musical. Its aerial combat scenes always made me think of the Sharks and Jets of West Side Story dancing with switchblades, perfectly choreographed. Realistic? Not exactly, but exceedingly entertaining.

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

While Maverick excels as a sequel, gracefully bringing the story, characters, situations, and dialog out of the 1980s and into the modern age while adding realism to flight sequences and personal interactions, it is still enough of a music video, dance show, and tearjerker to appeal to an audience well beyond aviation enthusiasts.

The post Review: How Does <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i> Stack Up? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I flew the [F-22] Raptor first. That airplane’s a little more impressive on takeoff. The first time you take off in those airplanes, it’s you alone in the cockpit. They don’t have any two-seater models. I think flying a really advanced, powerful fighter for the first time, especially by yourself not having an instructor inside with you—they’re actually in another plane, on the radio with you—is a pretty cool experience. 

We, of course, have a lot of emergency procedures, training and the simulators prior to being allowed to, you know, step foot, or even take off in one of those airplanes. Generally, you’ve got at least a handful of takeoffs and landings under your belt before you’re allowed to do it in real life. So that training just takes over. And it becomes, you know, very focused on habit patterns and stuff, you’ve learned to bring the airplane safely back. It’s kind of a whirlwind. And then every time after that, you know, you get to enjoy the moment. It feels like you’re flying a roller coaster sometimes, taking off and landing at 150 miles an hour.

Anytime you fly an airplane for the first time, the whole purpose is to get the lay of the land and feel what the airplane feels like. The profiles and anytime we go out in an airplane—in at least a military airplane—we have very specific what we call learning objectives for that day. So that includes, you know, doing some advanced handling with the airplane, just seeing basic turns, loops, how the airplane feels and flies at different altitudes, low speed, high speed. So that’s generally your first take flying the airplane. You come back over to the field, you know, doing some little approaches before you’re actually allowed to, you know, land it for the final time. That’s a general profile with the instructor alongside you leading you through it.

The acceleration isn’t like getting shot off an aircraft carrier, so it’s not that aggressive. It’s not like zero to 150 in a couple seconds. It’s definitely an acceleration, you know, pushed back in the seat a little bit. But, you’ve seen the sight picture and done it, you know, like I said, 10 to 20 times in that simulator, so you’ve seen what it feels like. But you add in the noises and the feels and the rumbles. It’s probably what you would assume is going from—in a racecar—going from zero to 150 to take off as well. So, there’s definitely the acceleration, you feel the power of the motor right under you.

How does the reality of flying a fighter jet differ from the Hollywood treatment?

I haven’t seen Top Gun: Maverick. Hopefully, they’re trying to make it as realistic as possible. But you know, there’s a lot more than just dogfighting other airplanes and wildly maneuvering the airplane. That makes for good TV, [but] there’s a lot of different things that go on, you know, in real life. … The fighting in relation to other airplanes is more a thing of the past, at least for the fifth-generation fighters that I fly. Our goal as a fifth-generation fighter is to be stealthy, which means you’re detecting and shooting missiles at people way before they even know you’re there, way before they can even target you and shoot back. That all happens basically in straight-level flight. You know, getting high and fast to shoot the missiles. It’s not as wildly aggressive of maneuvering that makes for good TV. So that’s a lot of what people don’t see. 

What was it like to film the commercial?

It was a good time. We had all four demo teams out there to film together. [We were] working with a civilian production company in an airplane, which is a little bit difficult to get on the same terminology when you’re talking about civilian and military flying. They’re talking about, you know, cinematography, things that they want to see and what they want to, they want you to do and try to translate that into military terms, to both, you know, comprehend that, tell them what we can and can’t do, what would maybe look more realistic than what they’re trying to get. But ultimately, I think it turned out some really good footage of all the airplanes showing off what at least the fighter side of aviation can do.

Your dad was a fighter pilot. How did that inspire your career choice?

I was born on an Air Force base and moved around throughout his assignments. So [after] moving around every couple of years, I was very used to that military lifestyle. As a kid running around through fighter squadrons, at all the social events, it was just a thing that me and my siblings did. It was a very normal way of life, of being involved in like that, that Air Force fighter pilot, fighter squadron mentality. That was a familiar thing for me. I honestly didn’t think about joining the Air Force or even being a pilot till much, much later in college. For me, it was you know, very familiar with moving around, it was something I actually enjoyed versus living in one spot for an extended period of time. I figured, you know, the military might be a right fit for me. I started researching options from there, and eventually found my way towards the Air Force and then applying for a pilot slot. There wasn’t a “must fulfill this legacy of being a fighter pilot” sort of thing. That was never pressured from myself or for my parents. It’s just something that seemed to fit my personality and lifestyle the best as I found my own path later on.

What’s it been like as a female aviator in a male-dominated career field?

It’s honestly a non-event. It’s a very rank-based structure, it’s very skill-based. Obviously, we’ve been opening up more and more jobs to women as we go along, but the standards are exactly the same. As long as you can do your job, fly the airplane, know the tactics, you know, perform exactly as well as the men, that’s all anybody cares about. Because they want to take the best people to war. Everybody wants the best wingman beside them. They really don’t care what they look like, what they sound like, where they came from, or you know, what they’ve been through. It really just matters if you can perform at the end of the day.

What did your dad say when you told him you were joining the Air Force?

I think he was probably excited, just to be able to talk to someone about the military and aviation and fighters and all that. That’s something that he enjoys. And it’s a common ground that, obviously, we can talk about now—how things have changed and how things are exactly the same. 

What’s the demo team pace like?

In the Air Force, people are mostly familiar with the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels. Those are multi-ship, they’re flying up to six airplanes at a given time very close together. The Air Force also has four single-ship demo teams, where we fly one airplane at an air show in about a 15-minute routine. We do 15 minutes, all to narration of music. [We] travel around the country, sometimes internationally to air shows, to really show off the airplane.

Our whole mission of demo teams and air shows, in general, is to recruit people to take our place one day. There’s one pilot flying at a time, but there’s also a team of maintainers behind me, making sure the airplane is safe and ready to fly. It can be a quick pace kind of thing as you’re going from airshow to airshow to airshow three weekends in a row. It’s a lot of traveling. But it’s also a lot of fun to get to see different places of the country.

We don’t listen to any music while we’re actually flying because I’ve got earplugs in and because the airplane’s pretty loud in there. We’re listening to about three radios up at any given time. I’m either talking to who we call the air boss who’s running the air show. I talk to my pilot on the ground, who’s called my safety officer. And then I can talk to a warbird, a World War II or similar airplane that we fly with, as well. So, I’ve got those frequencies up. My maintainers on the ground do run a soundtrack to the airshow, and each maneuver gets its own given song to a variety of different types of music, depending on what fits with the maneuver or fits into the local airshow vibe of what people want to hear.

What you see at airshows is very different from what the rest of the combat Air Force is doing every day when they start training for threats. My squadron just got back from Germany, [after being deployed] for three months doing the whole Russia-Ukraine sort of thing. So what they’re doing every day is extremely different from what I’m doing in front of an airshow doing aerobatics very close to the ground. They’re doing very serious things.

The post Flying Fancy: USAF Fighter Pilot Demos F-35 Aerobatics appeared first on FLYING Magazine.