Almost two years after its release, the film Top Gun: Maverick it still attracts aviation enthusiasts and lovers, or even people who are not so interested in the subject. With one worldwide box office of US$1.49 billion, The film produced and starring Tom Cruise recently arrived on the Netflix streaming platform, regaining some notoriety.
In one of the film's highlights, an enemy plane – a Sukhoi Su-57 Felon which in the film is only referred to as a “fifth generation fighter – performs an incredible maneuver to evade a missile fired from the F-14 piloted by Maverick (Cruise) with his ‘pupil’ Rooster (Miles Teller) in the back seat.
In addition to dodging the missile, the Su-57 goes from the position of prey to a hunter, changing the combat situation. Since it was released, this has been one of the most debated moments in the film.
But after all, would the Su-57 maneuver in Top Gun work in aerial combat outside the fourth wall? O aeroflap spoke with a military aviation expert, who prefer not to be identified, to answer this question.
First of all, it is important to make it clear that the stunt seen in the film exists and has already been demonstrated in real life. Called Tailslide or Kvochur Bell, the maneuver can be performed by planes with so-called super maneuverability, such as the Su-35 Flanker-E and the Su-57 itself. It is named after Russian test pilot Anatoly Nikolayevich Kvochur.
During the maneuver, the plane leaves straight flight and switches to a vertical nose plane, performs a turn and returns to normal flight, still with a high angle of attack. In the film, the maneuver is seen more quickly and the Su-57 also performs more turns. In the video below you can see a Su-35BM performing the movement at an air show.
For the expert, the maneuver does have a use in real aerial combat, but only partially as seen in the film. He explains that the acrobatics would not be used to dodge a missile, but could be used to change the combat position, as occurs in the scene.
“It can be applied, however, more to move from a defensive to an offensive situation. Making your attacker sneeze [exceed] the plane and you fall into an offensive position, behind him, as happens in the film”, describes, stating that stunts like the G tonneau and the famous Pugachev Cobra also has the same use.
Still, it's not as easy as it seems. He explains that fighter pilots are trained to anticipate enemy movements, carrying out “energy maintenance” (speed) to maintain their offensive position and the enemy in the “zone of control”, remaining in an advantageous position. “This maneuver does exactly that, it completely takes control of the offensive fighter and causes the plane to brake suddenly in the air.”
While it can be used to tip the scales in Dogfight, close-in aerial combat, the same cannot be said for missile defense. “No In this case, it would not be useful to mislead a missile.”, says the expert, restricting himself only to short-range heat-guided missiles, such as the American AIM-9 Sidewinder, Russian R-73, European IRIS-T and others.
He explains that this or any other maneuver carried out within the No Escape Zone (NEZ) will be overcome by weapons, which are much more maneuverable than the plane. And pilots try to fire their missiles when the distance between them and the target is in the NEZ, where the chances of the target escaping are almost zero.
Airmen employ standard tactics to defend against these and other missiles. In the case of heat-guided weapons, as in the film, the pilots use flares, cross paths with another plane in the arena and even slow down the aircraft to reduce the temperature in the engine nozzles, in an attempt to deceive the missile. On the other hand, new missiles have technology to differentiate the heat emitted by a flare and the infrared signature of the real target.
Finally, the expert, in a good-natured tone, says that he liked the maneuver in Top Gun. “It's a movie, it's much more fun to watch that way. But I believe that those maneuvers are done more to help you move from one situation to another. Against missiles, especially [guided by] infrared, it is very difficult to make a maneuver that does not allow it to maneuver to attack you”, concludes.
