Why not just fly F-35?

I think it was a cheesy excuse because they would be too expensive to use in a movie. The F-18's are old and was cheaper to use is my guess.

Mountains mess with GPS on my phone all the time. What if they need to text with someone about groceries or a date while on the mission? Maybe the F-35 uses cellular tech to communicate with its grandparents, F-14 & F-16.

Seriously, I had no idea about all this and I'm guessing the vast majority of the audience didn't either. This is like the original "Top Gun" where the jets had "blatantly non-matching carrier markings," another detail that I missed and suspect I'm not alone in having missed.

It's still an interesting detail/flaw though.

Still, isn't the F-18 the current carrier mainstay? From what I've read, the F-35 is a long range fighter, and they specifically wanted to deploy from a carrier at a relatively short range in order to surprise the "rogue naton."

From what I understand what they were talking about is not related F-35 per se, but precision guided bombs. Precision guided bombs could be GPS guided and the mountains have GPS jammers installed, so the GPS guided bombs won't work, so they have to use dumb bombs and those bombs have to be dropped at very close range. They basically admitted that F-35, once released the bombs, could not do a steep climb and escape, so they had to use F-18. I think that is the premise of the movie.

But of course that is not true, precision guided bombs are primarily laser guided, GPS guidance is optional, and laser guidance is only affected by weather, so the reason they give in the movie is stupid, for lack of a better word, to a point even audience without specific military knowledge can be instinctively aware.

Of course that is not the only place things don't make sense, many many more things in this movie do not make sense, this part is just more noticeable. For people actually understand military weapons, even just very basic knowledge, can be hard to enjoy this movie. But luckily that does not apply to majority of the audience.

The main difference of this movie from the original I think is the loss of seriousness, think of it as a comic book movie, it's unrealisticness is just one step away from Marvel SHIELD helicarrier. I don't think I am exaggerating it.

Easy, there would be no movie then. Need 2 seaters to film the faces of the actors where the F-35 is single seat only so they'd be left without the realism and fall back on the original Top Gun which is a no for Cruise. And yes, GPS jamming environment would negate the GPS armaments for the F-35. Whether that's plausible is debatable.

I can't believe this is an actual point of contention with people. The f-18 is a fully capable fighter, and still deployed for CV. The F-35 is the newest and most advanced fighter, it's not likely to be exposed for a silly hollywood production. The USN was highly protective of weapons systems even during the first Top Gun, only allowing for a single missile launch to be filmed.

We got a great action movie to enjoy, so enjoy it. Or continue to bitch about it I guess. You're not impressing anyone with your silly arguments.

Well, why not F-22s as an escort at least. They knew they were going against fifth gen fighters (Su 57) which Russia only has a handful of. The U.S. has an entire fleet. IRL the hornets would have been shot down by the SU 57s, it wouldn't even be a contest. A single F-22 can defeat five F-15s and an SU-57 is supposedly on par with an F-22.

However this is Hollywood, so suspension of disbelief is par for the course. Besides, no way, the Pentagon would allow actors to fly F-22s, So old ass Super-Hornets it is.

Just some made up reason because the U.S. military will not let actors fly the F-35 or F-22. If this mission took place IRL, would probably use Super-Hornets or F-35s to deliver the bombs, but they would probably have an escort of F-22s to deal with the SU-57s. Not to mention they would have hit the SAM batteries with cruise missiles first, so the canyon run wouldn't have been nearly as perilous.

Well the film was supposedly filmed between May 2018 to April 2019 and the F-35C that the US Navy uses for carrier operations did not achieve operational status until February 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II

U.S. Navy
The USN achieved operational status with the F-35C in Block 3F on 28 February 2019.[3] On 2 August 2021, the F-35C of VFA-147, as well as the CMV-22 Osprey, embarked on their maiden deployments as part of Carrier Air Wing 2 on board the USS Carl Vinson.[293]