Goofs

Two ribbons Maverick had in Top Gun (1986), the Navy Expeditionary Medal and the Humanitarian Service Medal, are missing from his ribbon bar.

After the dogfight football scene, when Maverick is giving Penny a ride home, his t-shirt is changing color from black to white to black from one cut to the next.

Maverick's facial hair changes constantly, randomly going from completely shaved to stubbly, sometimes in the same scene (the carrier elevator scene with Warlock, for example).

Maverick launches from the aircraft carrier off the starboard catapult. Parked aircraft are lined up over the port bow catapult, taking it out of service. A few minutes later, when the last aircraft of the mission is launched, the parked aircraft are gone.

When Rooster and Maverick meet in the woods after they are shot down, neither have patches on their flight suits. However, during the dogfight with the SU-57, Rooster's Top Gun patch reappears on his right shoulder.

At 1h12'10" Coyote is in G-LOC, releases the stick and his aircraft falls towards the ground. Super-hornet are equipped with auto GCAS (automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System), which would react to the situation and take control to climb and level at a safe altitude with no obstacles.

The connectors for the F-14 and F-18 oxygen masks are very different, so Maverick and Rooster wouldn't have been able to connect their air hoses or radio mics, and would have had to shout at each other. This would also mean their G-suits would be inoperable.

The film's plot is partly based on the premise that F-35s cannot be used for a certain mission, due to GPS jamming being employed in the mission's target area, which necessitates falling back to F-18s, and requiring turning to a seasoned pilot like Maverick for advanced F-18 flying instruction. However, GPS jamming poses no special difficulty for an F-35 -- none that wouldn't also apply to an F-18. Verily, any of the munitions seen being used for the mission by the F-18s in the film, could be used by F-35s just as well.

The F/A18 is fly-by-wire. They don't need to pull back on the stick with both hands for tight turns.

While climbing out of the crater of the dormant volcano, and moving away from the target, Maverick and the other Weapon System Officers operate the Raytheon ATFLIR targeting pod to "laze" the target until the laser guided bomb impacts. This is impossible, as the targeting pod's field of view only extends forward, to the sides, and downward. It cannot look behind.

After leaving the canyon the planes were attacked by radar-homed missiles. However, they scattered flares that are effective against IR guided missiles only. The countermeasure button that they hit clearly says "Remote Flare/Chaff", implying that both flares and chaffs (which work against radar guided missiles) are released at the same time. Fighters often do this due to the difficulty in distinguishing between IR guided and radar guided missiles. Rooster does say "I'm out of flares", but he was clearly trying to focus on staying alive more than stating the correct technical details, and this doesn't mean chaffs were not also being used. Also, flares can sometimes work against radar guided missiles by triggering their proximity sensors.

The firepower of the helicopter would have pierced the dead tree trunk and killed the pilot behind it if the Mi-24 helicopter was a newer variant. The older variants (like this one) have dual quad-barrel YakB-12.7 mm (.50 cal) rotary cannons, but they were replaced with 23mm or 30mm auto-cannons in later models as the 12.7mm did not provide enough firepower against dug-in or lightly armored targets. A person behind a frozen log covered in snow is the very definition of a 'dug-in' target, and thus the guns would have been of limited effectiveness firing at him ... much easier to just re-position to shoot behind it than to waste time and ammo trying to shoot through it.

The F-14 Tomcat does not have short takeoff capability and requires nearly half a mile runway length for takeoff. However, in a 1972 test, an F-14 prototype was shown taking off from a runway in just an 1,100 foot distance by using full throttle and afterburner.

When Phoenix introduces other pilots in Penny's bar to Hangman, she says, "You're looking at the only naval aviator in active duty with a confirmed air to air kill." But that's not right. Maverick is still on active duty and he has 3 confirmed air-to-air kills. However, he brags about it before Maverick is formally introduced the following day- and Hangman looks surprised. Given Maverick's relative isolation as a test pilot, people can be unaware that he was still in active duty.

In the canyon before Rooster increases speed there is a GoPro camera visible attached to the rear of the jet.

However, as stated in the Trivia section: the filmmakers decided not to clean up one aspect of their aerial photography that keen-eyed viewers might notice: the barely perceptible reflection of the cameras in some shots. "There was talk about, do we get rid of them? But that would have make (sic!) it even more synthetic," he said. "We worked so hard to get it in camera that we left them in there a little bit intentionally, because we're really capturing this."

Although Maverick and Rooster are flying an F-14, the reflections in their helmets show an F-18 cockpit.

That's because the Navy didn't let the actors fly the jets. They had to use two seaters, so a Navy pilot could do the actual flying, while the actors were doing the acting.

When the jukebox is unplugged just before Rooster plays piano in the bar, the sound slows down and diminishes, like it was playing vinyl records. The discs in the player are compact discs, which are digital, and the sound would have gone from On to Off immediately.

Tom Cruise is 170 cm tall and Jennifer Connelly is 169 cm, yet Maverick is significantly taller than Penny when he is wearing his white uniform and shot from the back than when seen from the front with her outside the house.

Tomahawks were launched to destroy the enemy airfields, yet no attack was made against the SAM sites. Even if the aviators flew low, taking out SAM sites would still be required and would not have resulted in Maverick's shooting down.

When Hangman looks at Rooster and Maverick talking on the tarmac before their first training mission, there's a double canopy of Maverick's plane behind him, yet he flies a single-seater.

That's because they had to use two seaters, so a Navy pilot could do the actual flying.

California has a mandatory helmet law for motorcycle riders, so Maverick should have a helmet on. Military bases also require helmets, regardless of the state law, so even in a state without one, on base he would be required to wear a helmet. Some bases also require a high visibility vest be worn by the rider.

Interestingly, Tom Cruise has never worn a motorcycle helmet while driving a motorcycle in any movie. Actually, in Knight and Day (2010), his character briefly wears a police motorcycle helmet before it is seen falling onto the hood of the vehicle.

Rooster would be credited with 3 kills: 1 for shooting down the helicopter and 2 acting as RIO/WSO for Maverick.

The US Navy already knew how many SAM sites there are, yet all the F-18s were only equipped with enough "flare" to defend against 3 missiles.

In the screen of the mission control center, 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W is labeled as the coordinate of the enemy airfield. In real life, this locale is known as Point Nemo, a point in the Southern Pacific ocean and officially known as "the oceanic pole of inaccessibility". It is the point in the ocean that is farthest away from any land, surrounded by more than 1,000 miles of ocean in every direction.

The action mostly takes place at the "Top Gun" pilot training school in San Diego, but the actual United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (commonly TOPGUN) was moved in 1996 from Naval Air Station Miramar (in San Diego) to Naval Air Station Fallon, in Western Nevada.

When Maverick and Penny go sailing, they are clearly on San Francisco Bay, with Angel Island and hilly topography visible in the background. But San Francisco Bay is about 500 miles from San Diego, where the story takes place, and would be impossible to go to on a day trip. Nearby San Diego Bay has relatively flat topography.

It is never explained in the film why a drone cannot be deployed for the mission and not risk pilots' lives. GPS jamming wouldn't be a problem, since autonomous drones can reach their target without GPS. Since the film itself has Admiral Cain questioning early on whether pilots will be necessary in the age of drone warfare, never coming back to the subject of drones seems like an oversight.

Indeed, if Captain Mitchell's chief concern is making sure no pilot dies in the mission, the option should have been raised by him, since, as a fighter pilot who served as recently as the Iraq war, he should have been familiar with drones.

In the final engagement scene, Hangman is in an "inferior" F-18 but is not seen on radar by the enemy's "5th Gen" fighter. Also, the "Felon" jet would have detected the missile lock a lot earlier and taken out Hangman before Maverick.

Cyclone says he could have Maverick dishonorably discharged for his stunt with the fighter jet that proves the mission can be done. Commissioned officers in the US Armed Forces do not get "dishonorably discharged", they receive "dismissals", which is essentially the same thing, but a high-ranking officer would know the difference in terminology.

Adm. Simpson says that the Cobra maneuver could have gotten all three pilots killed, but Hangman didn't join the fight, and Maverick and Rooster didn't have RIO's, so only 2 people could have died.

An admiral tells Maverick that the uranium enrichment plant his team is to destroy was built in violation of a "multilateral NATO treaty." A NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) treaty would have been signed by only the U.S. and certain of its allies, not by the unnamed enemy country, which would not have been bound by it.

To be a navy pilot you need to have 20/20 vision but Bob wears glasses.

This is factually incorrect. The character in question, Bob, is not a pilot (Naval Aviator); he is a Naval Flight Officer (NFO) holding the position of Weapons Systems Officer WSO). NFO's have for decades been permitted to wear corrective lenses so long as their vision is correctable to 20/20. Furthermore, once Naval Aviators (and Air Force pilots for that matter) earn their wings they are permitted to wear corrective lenses if their vision later deteriorates, as it does in most people as they age.

During Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky's funeral Maverick pounds his Aviator wings into the Admiral's casket. This is a Navy SEAL tradition but is not done by Aviators.