Top Gun and the changing nature of war

What can the Top Gun films tell us about the changing nature of warfare? Queen Mary Online's Dr Katharine Hall takes a look.

This post is by Dr Katharine Hall, Module Leader for Queen Mary Online's MA in International Relations. 

This summer saw the release of the Top Gun sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, over 35 years after the first movie hit the theatres. Like the original, Top Gun: Maverick dazzles with its fighter jet flight scenes and seemingly impossible aerial manoeuvres. No spoilers here - but Tom Cruise as Maverick returns of course, now leading a younger team of pilots to complete a dangerous and challenging mission.

What can Top Gun tell us about the changing nature of warfare?

From the music to the bar scenes to the flight stunts, the new movie pays heavy homage to the original and in many respects seems out of time with the contemporary moment. Is the new release a nod to a previous era of war and air power – a nostalgia movie – or can we learn something from it about the changing nature of warfare today?

In the first Top Gun, the individual (male) pilot takes centre stage. Maverick’s bravery – along with his willingness to buck the rules and take chances – are glorified in the movie. The figure of the pilot, and more specifically the airman, has been crafted this way, and held up as a kind of ideal man and as a symbol of the nation since the birth of air power.

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Peter Adey, for example, explores this in part of his book Aerial Life. Macho team comradery and competition are also strongly featured in the original Top Gun, which many scholars have argued is a key aspect of gendered military culture and unit cohesion.

Interestingly, these images remain central in the 2022 film (though notably a female pilot has been added to the team). As Maverick says throughout the film, “It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.” It is the pilot’s exceptional skill, tenacity, and personality that ultimately save the day, and the film also includes a team bonding montage of tackle football played at the beach.

Yet, this emphasis on the figure of the pilot contrasts significantly with how American air power today is portrayed, both in Hollywood and in practice. Now, pilotless aircraft dominate the air power budget and policy priorities of the US military. Oddly, drones are only mentioned once in Top Gun: Maverick. This is in contrast to a proliferation of drone-focused war movies released over the last few years, as for example the 2015 Eye in the Sky.

US power today

Perhaps the 2022 Top Gun is therefore a bit stuck in the 1980’s past, but it also serves as a reminder that there remain significant continuities in the way that US air power is utilised today. Whether through the image of the airman/fighter jet or the Predator drone, air power is portrayed as embodying the ideals of precision strikes, sophisticated technology, and quick and effective aerial intervention.

These ideals, of course, are rarely demonstrated in practice. Furthermore, an overemphasis on drones today fails to recognise the still very much active bombing operations of manned aircraft by the US air force – seen for example in close air support operations as well as in part of operations like Talon Anvil reported by the New York Times.

The emergence of the armed drone in 2001 has been often hailed by academics and the media as issuing in a radically new era of robot warfare. However, as we learn in more detail in the MA International Relations War and International Security module, radical breaks in war are never as clear cut as we often describe them.

Top Gun: Maverick largely side steps the effect of drones on air power, but in doing so it highlights the very human aspects of war fighting and aerial bombing that seem to persist for better or worse.

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