MovieChat Forums > Top Gun: Maverick (2022) Discussion > Why not just fly F-35?

Why not just fly F-35?

posted 2 years ago by sonans (1543)
33 replies | jump to latest

If I remember correctly, the movie use one line to explain: "Because the mountain make GPS useless, and F-35 need GPS."

What?

Why that monutain can make GPS useless? Why F-35 need GPS?

[–] novicepq (10) 2 years ago

Possibly security reason. The Chinese are very good at copycat and reverse engineering. It's not like the time was 40 or even 30 years ago. The Chinese right now can probably look at the interior of the aircraft and see which is which and which is doing what job.

[–] strntz (12225) 2 years ago

I'm not sure which one it was, but I read several years ago that the Chinese were able to hack into and download the *entire* engineering package of either the 22 or 35. Whether that included the avionics I don't know.

[–] wrecche (631) 2 years ago

I can't even get a decent GPS signal in my house. Let alone surrounded by rocky mountains.

[–] Mustang (5418) 2 years ago

GPS is blocked by mountains as GPS is based off satellites. So it is a realistic "excuse" or issue.

The way I saw it in the context of this film is they have made the F-35 overly complicated so they had to use an old school aircraft like the F18 to get the job done along with the old school pilot leading the mission.

[–] funpig (20) a year ago

TC is saving the F-35 for TP3.

[–] liscarkat (18373) 10 months ago

They should fly North American P-51 Mustangs. That was a helluva airplane!

[–] Moonglum9 (11267) 10 months ago

The actual story is that Tom Cruise just couldn't reach the controls in the F-35 toy models, so they had to use the F-18 models and they gave Tiny T a booster seat and then he was able to access all the controls.

[–] strntz (12225) 4 months ago

Finally an answer that makes sense.