LOL…Mitchel still has a few decades to make Rear Admiral like Ed Harris’s character.
You mean he went from being a commissioned officer to a warrant officer? That seems…unusual to say the least.
The problem is that flying billets are limited (by available aircraft and duty station) and it is necessary to open them up to get fresh talent into the wings. It usually isn’t a problem because (at least in the Air Force; I assume the same about Navy and Marines) many pilots aren’t career guys, so they’ll do their obligation, and get out to become civilian commercial pilots, which isn’t as exciting but is more lucrative and conducive to family life, or if they really enjoy the ‘Danger Zone’ they’ll become well-compensated civilian test pilots. It’s not impossible that ‘Maverick’ could still be flying into his sixties over a nearly four decade career but I’d be shocked to find someone on active duty status who is doing that today.
Stranger
If memory serves me, it took an act of congress to prevent the navy from booting out Hyman Rickover, the father of the atomic submarine. There was more than a whiff of anti-semitism involved.
I had understood that, in the new movie, Maverick was now one of the Top Gun instructors, not in a combat flight position. And it would make sense for the instructors to be seasoned, experienced veterans. Was I mistaken?
He was not a Top Gun instructor. He was a test pilot. (There is a sequence in which you see him destroy a hypersonic scramjet stealth aircraft by pushing it past its limits for no particular reason.) It is mentioned that some years ago he was an instructor at TOP GUN and lasted all of 3 months in that position before getting sacked. Then (the events of the film) the test aircraft programme he was on gets the axe and, (thanks to his buddy pulling strings) instead of getting canned, he gets called to train a squadron of Top Gun graduates for an insane mission because he has (relatively) recent aerial combat and dogfighting experience, or something.
In fact, they say that the only reason he still has a naval career is thanks to his senior admiral buddy.
If what I saw in the previews is not misleading.
Iceman
A seasoned, well experienced fighter pilot would be like 38. Michael Ironside (Jester) would have been 36 in Top Gun. Tom Skerritt (Viper) was 53 (!) which already strains credulity.
Because…DANGER ZONE!
You’ll never say hello to you
Until you get it on the red line overload!
You’ll never know what you can do
Until you get it up as high as you can go!
Stranger
Love that opening scene! One of the best ever.
Speaking to the test pilot thing, could there be some kind of niche program that he could fall into that would end up keeping him around longer at a given rank - like liaising with some skunk works lab or being farmed out to some other program due to some particular expertise or interdepartmental power moves?
… and what, he’d continued to be paid at his current rank while he’s also building up his time in grade and time in service? Never heard of such a thing but I suppose it may be possible.
I certainly agree it’s unusual. But not inconceivable.
I witnessed a similar thing as a young USAF 2Lt in the early 1980s. An instructor at one of my schools after pilot training and before my first full operational assignment was an E-5 Tech Sergeant. With USAF pilot wings on his chest. USAF does not have, and never did have, enlisted pilots. WTF?
Come to find out he’d been an F-100 pilot in Viet Nam. Finishing up the war as an O-3 (Captain). He tried to stay in, despite the massive reductions in headcount as the war ended. He was also apparently ill adapted to peacetime service & pissed a bunch of people off. So was never promoted to O-4 (Major). Eventually, under the up or out policy he was pushed out of being an officer at somewhere around 12-15 years. At which point he enlisted and kept his years of service towards retirement. When I encountered him he had about 18 months to make his 20 years and his pension. He was counting the days.
OTOH, in my 8 years active time dealing with both USAF and the Army, he was the one and only rank-hermaphrodite like that I ever encountered.
I know one. Originally, he was a U.S. naval aviator (commissioned officer). He developed a medical issue, and the Navy would not allow him to fly anymore. He ended up as an sergeant in an artillery unit in my state’s Army National Guard. He wanted to finish his career as an NCO, but the moment an officer’s slot opened up, he was required to accept a promotion to captain. Last time I saw him, he was a major.
I have no knowledge of this film (the sequel), I don’t know it’s plot or storyline. Nonetheless, I must disagree with you.
There was an important reason for him to push the jet so hard that it done broke: It establishes the Cruise character is still every bit the brave Maverick that he was 30 years ago.
Sounds like a efficient (if a bit ham-fisted) scene to advance the plot and comfort and assure the film audience that yes, their rugged, dangerous, unpredictable film hero is back. Audiences dig that lame shit.
So basically for an officer who hits the mandatory mark (20 years, 28 years, whatever depending on the rank) they are well aware they will hit the limit if no promotion; but they don’t get a “quit now” command before that? I assume there may be hints they are overstaying their welcome, like poor postings? Or do they actually have layoffs sometimes, like Reacher in the book series? Or offers “here’s something extra to leave now”?
Poor postings, yes. In my experience, that’s not so much “We’re sending you to bumfuck Alaska,” but rather “We need some drone to push paper in Oklahoma.” Everyone knows that job does not lead anywhere, so savvy officers will read the writing on the wall and often get out on their own terms prior to hitting their service limit.
The other option is called a RIF – reduction in force. Higher-ranking officers will get together and rank all of the officers in a certain grade and career field by performance. Then all of the low performing officers get offered separation pay or early retirement in order to GTFO.
The last option is administrative discharges . Basically, if the branch in question really, really needs to downsize, they’ll start aggressively identifying fuck-ups. In 2003 if you had a pulse and a commission, you could serve as long as you’d like. In 2013, if you failed a PT test or had a bad performance review or two, someone my start eyeing you for dismissal.
All that said, if you have a commission and you stay out of trouble, there’s no real mechanism to force someone out prior to their service limit cap. Which is generally long enough to get a retirement.
All of the above applies to officers. It’s much easier to boot enlisted folks. The longest term of enlistment is 6 years, extendable to 8, and denying someone a reenlistment is done at the unit level, so it’s trivial to give someone the boot when their enlistment is up if they’re not performing. That means they still might make it 10 or 12 years, but they won’t get a retirement.
Do you mean the actors (Ironside, Skeritt) would have been 36 and 53 or that the characters (Jester, Viper) were those ages? Were the characters ages ever given in the film?
The actor’s ages of course have little to do with the age of their characters. The filmmakers can make them any age they want so long as it’s plausible. If Skeritt, e.g., with make-up, lighting, camera angles, etc. could pass for 40-ish then they’re golden.
And now there are computer-aided production techniques that make stripping decades from actor’s appearances simple (see: The Irishman).
Actors are not the same as the roles they play.
I’ve got IMAX tickets for tomorrow night. Can’t wait!
I feel the need…
The entire notion of a sixty-something test pilot begs credulity; even someone who has kept themselves in great physical condition (as Cruise himself has) is going to have slower reflects, less physical resilience, and a lower tolerance for high-G maneuvers than someone in their thirties or forties. An officer at an O-4 or O-5 level might be functioning as a program manager for a major development program (which would be a ‘chair-sitter’ role) but I highly doubt an O-6 would be doing that kind of work.
This film and its predecessor are essentially predicated on the notion that there is something immeasurably special about ‘Maverick’ that makes him irreplaceable, which is actually completely contrary to military doctrine and philosophy; to wit, the goal is to take anyone who has the essential capability and turn them into a capable and proficient warfighter in whatever specific occupational speciality they are in.
His character is a moron and he would have been grounded administratively for deliberately breaking the ‘hard deck’ and likely disciplined for the incident leading to the death of his RIO, revoking flight status. The original movie is a weird kind of extended recruiting advertisement that actually shows all of the things you shouldn’t do if you want to be a naval aviator; essentially like watching a Chuck Norris movie for cues on how to join 1SOFD-D, or watching Bond movies to learn the art of espionage.
Stranger
Wikipedia quotes this book:
“[Rickover’s] peers in the Navy’s engineer branch thought to get rid of him through failure of promotion above captain. This would entail automatic retirement at the thirty-year mark. But someone made the case to the U.S. Senate, charged by the Constitution with formal confirmation of military promotions. In that year, 1953, two years before Nautilus first went to sea, the Senate failed to give its usual perfunctory approval of the Navy admiral promotion list, and the press was outraged because Rickover’s name was not on it. … Ultimately an enlightened Secretary of the Navy, Robert B. Anderson, ordered a special selection board to sit. With some shuffling of feet it did what it had been ordered to do… Ninety-five percent of Navy captains must retire regardless of how highly qualified because there are only vacancies for 5 percent of them to become admirals, and although vindictiveness has sometimes played a part in determining who shall fail of selection for promotion (thus also violating the system), never before or since have pressures from outside the Navy overturned this form of career-termination.”[36]
It helps to have friends i high places.