Summary and Key Points: Tom Cruise's dramatic entrance at the 2024 Olympics, reminiscent of his iconic role as Maverick in Top Gun, has reignited interest in the mysterious SR-72 Darkstar, a hypersonic aircraft featured in Top Gun: Maverick.
-While the F-14, F/A-18, and P-51 Mustang seen in the film are real military aircraft, the SR-72 is a mix of Hollywood fiction and potential reality.
-Lockheed Martin, which collaborated on the film, hints that the SR-72 depicted could be based on a real project currently under secret development.
What We Hope to See: Proposed in 2013 to fill a reconnaissance gap, the SR-72, if real, might fly in the 2030s with a hypersonic propulsion system.
Tom Cruise has a knack for generating publicity. The sixty-something-year-old ziplined into the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Olympics before exiting the stadium on a motorcycle. Images of Cruise on a motorcycle harken to the Top Gun series, in which Cruise plays naval aviator Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
While Maverick is well remembered for his motorcycle riding, Maverick’s primary mode of transportation is aircraft. In the two-part series, we’ve seen Cruise pilot four separate aircraft: the F-14 Tomcat, F/A-18 Super Hornet, P-51 Mustang, and the SR-72 Darkstar. The F-14, F/A-18, and P-51 are all legendary, aircraft plucked straight from the historic/current inventory of the US military.
The SR-72 meanwhile is pure Hollywood. Or is it?
Lockheed Martin helped the filmmakers design the SR-72 that was depicted in the Top Gun sequel. Rumor suggests that the aircraft depicted in the film is similar to the very real version of the SR-72, currently under surreptitious development with Lockheed Martin.
Known alternatively as the Darkstar, or as the Son of Blackbird (about the SR-71 Blackbird), the SR-72 is depicted as a hypersonic aircraft. In Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise’s character pushes the SR-71 to Mach 10 – and then beyond, which leads to the aircraft disintegrating off-screen. So, how real was the SR-72 from Top Gun: Maverick, exactly? Here’s what Lockheed Martin said on their website:
“We partnered with the Top Gun: Maverick film’s creative team to collaborate on bringing our expertise in hypersonic capabilities and aircraft design to the big screen. With Skunk Works' expertise in developing the fastest known aircraft combined with a passion and energy for defining the future of aerospace, Darkstar’s capabilities could be more than mere fiction. They could be reality…”
Lockheed’s corporate copy doesn’t do much to satisfy our curiosity. Whether the SR-72 is a real program, or whether the jet is currently under development, remains unclear – as is the nature of secret government weapons programs. Lockheed may well have offered us a first view of something very nearly resembling the SR-72. Or maybe Cruise’s SR-72 was a work of pure fiction, an aeronautical red herring. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle; the real aircraft may resemble, if not approximate, the film aircraft.
The SR-72 program was proposed in 2013 out of concerns that the satellite and UAVs that had been enlisted to fulfill the SR-71’s reconnaissance mission were leaving a coverage gap. The SR-72 was proposed as gap coverage, to maintain a full breadth of options in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) realm.
We don’t know very much about the SR-72 program – but we do know that the SR-72 is expected to feature an air-breathing hypersonic propulsion system. The air-breathing hypersonic propulsion system would power the SR-72 in every phase of flight needed for such an advanced aircraft.
Expect something like the SR-72, whatever it may ultimately look like, to fly sometime in the 2030s.
Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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