The Glade 4.0

This belongs in Entertainment but I have no idea if Elmo frequents there or not...

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/20 ... se_wo.html

They'll probably just have Maverick get shot down at the very beginning of the movie and they can bring him back from the dead to help under privileged teenagers a couple of sequels later. That'd be cool, right?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Its not going to be the same with Super Hornets.. maybe F-35s? That would be a little better, but even if its set when the F-14 is still flying I dunno where they'd find any to use in filming that are serviceable, or pilots that are current.

Oh well, lets hope for the best.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

24 years later?

He'll be in command of the Top Gun flight school, Iceman will be the Colonel assigned to Afghanistan as a mission planner/coordinator/command role. There will still be unpleasant banter indicating that while they respect each other they don't get along all that well.

Something happens to Iceman, he's kidnapped by Taliban and several old friends are gunned down in the process. Maverick back at Top Gun is asked to train the rescue mission. Instead he takes the latest fly-by-thought T-35 and has his top students running drones to the Taliban hide-out where everyone with a raggedy turban dies. Maverick and Iceman fly off into the sunset over Kabul, their running lights blinking don't ask don't tell.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

That's wonderful. I was just thinking that all they have to do is include a completely tongue-in-cheek, way over the top beach volleyball scene and I'll laugh enough to make whatever else they do tolerable.

Awesome, I hadn't heard that about Maverick.

And there should still be pilots that can run an F-14 in front of a chaser camera plane easy enough.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Well Tom Cruise still looks like he's 16 like he was in the first movie, so they should not have any problems asking him to reprise his role.

Besides, the guy already believes that Humans came to Earth in a giant airplane, so . . .

If they can find one in working order.

I'm not optomistic that the F-14 will be featured though.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'd be ok with F-22's. Better look, faster, and more camera tricks than the 35.

Or int he timeline the kept the Navy version of the F-22 with swept wings or the two-seater version?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You mean this?

I wouldn't hope much for that either; the Navy quit looking at the ATF before the contract was even awarded to Lockheed.

I also wouldn't hope much for the current F-22; it's Air Force only. On the bright side, if they go with the F-35 and pay even minimal attention to detail, it at least won't be the V/STOL B model.

I read one source that indicated there might be a focus on *shudder* UAVs... I hope not, for the sake of posterity.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Besides, aren't UAVs the Air Force's pet toy?

The reason Top Gun got so much support from the Navy was because it was basically recruiting publicity showing off and glorifying all their cool toys. Thus, I'd be highly surprised if they deviated from their actual equipment into scrapped projects or, worse, Air Force gear.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That email only says that "Maverick" will be the lead role, not that it will be the same character using that call sign, much less the same actor reprising the same role.

He's even more reckless and crazy as he's trying to prove his manhood because his girlfiend is now a lesbian.

Nah there was a naval version of the F-22 proposed but it got axed early 90's - no idea how far it got. And the first movie had "Migs" in it that were about as accurate as calling a bathtub an aquarium although no carrier launches unless they totally special effect it if they use F-22's. 35's are just too boxy.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

At the moment they are. There's all kinds of talk about how the F-22/F-35 will be the last manned fighters, but I'm not buying it yet. The next bomber will almost certainly be manned, and I think the basic problem that a data link could be hacked and a control station destroyed (especially for strategic bombers and fighters intended for air defense) will prove to be a deterrent.

There's all kinds of advantages to unmanned full-sized aircraft in terms of the savings in qeight and increases in permissible performance without a human on board, but ultimately tht data link seems like a huge weak point. Even if you can't hack it, it could be jammed, or like I pointed out above, interrupted at the control end. If it relies on satellites for long-range control, those could be attacked as well.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The article explains that. The naval F-22 got axed before the F-22 was selected.

The naval F-22 could actually have been the F-23 for precisely that reason; in fact there was a series of computer games called JetFighter based on that specualtion in the warly 90s, but that never happened. The games sucked too.

The MiG-28 was actually an F-5; there are no even-numbered MiGs. Iron Eagle did better; it got Israeli fighters, and not ones America sold them to play MiG so they were more subtle. Iron Eagle II, on the other hand, had F-4 Phantoms standing in for MiG-29s which was... jarring.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As an aside, evolution of the F-22 airframe:



Not sure if I posted this before, but a comparison of the F-22, F-23, F-35 and PAK-FA:

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Fairly certain that the jets used in Top Gun as the MiG-28 were F-20s, not F-5s (although they're practically the same plane, seeing as how the F-20 was an evolution of the F-5).

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It's also possible it was a combination of the two, because I distinctly remember the jets in Top Gun having that boxy secondary intake under the tail that the F-5s don't have.

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Hopefully they don't try to reinvent the lubed up volley ball scene in this one.

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The Dude abides.

The F-20 was a single engine version, while the F-5 had 2, which is what was displayed in the movie.

The Top Gun MiGs were F-5s, specifically E and F models. The F-20 was initially called the F-5G, which could account for the confusion. I'm not sure what the box you're referring to is, but it may have been something introduced on the E model that wasn't present on earlier versions.

Only 3 F-20s were built. There weren't enough to film the battle at the end where there were at least 5 enemy aircraft. They could have been used mixed with F-5s since they look so similar but I ahven't found anything indicating they were.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I find the looks of this:


Unbelievably sexy.

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Holy shitsnacks!