TCTTS said:
I blocked him. But now that I can see what he wrote... really? Examples like this are why so many people dislike aTm. My post was clearly tongue in cheek. I don't actually believe that they'd let Cruise land fighter jets on aircraft carriers.
Honestly, it wasn't that obvious to me. Tom Cruise is famous for doing his own stunts. Such as getting a gazillion hours in a helicopter for one of the mission impossible movies. Here is some background info on why I thought the notion of Tom Cruise getting to fly an F-35 needed correcting:
He was at my work a month or so ago supposedly getting fitted for a F-35 helmet (which cost $400K each):
(BTW, that's his own P-51)
And here is a picture of the pricey helmet:
Those helmets are custom fit for each pilot and are necessary because the F-35 has this thing where it projects stuff onto the glass in your helmet while you fly. Imagine a virtual reality thing you wear as you fly and you can look down and not see your legs, plane, or anything but see the ground underneath you. That's what the F-35 does. For it to work right, the helmet has to fit just right, snug, and not move at all.
People at my work were wondering why the hell were they going through that level of expense for a movie when there is absolutely no way that a causal observer would be able to tell "that symbol on his visor is off by half an inch!" That the only (not gratuitous) reason they would actually go through that expense would be if he were to fly the thing himself. He did get to fly in jets for the first Top Gun, after all.
I'm just saying, that for anybody who may think he will be flying in an F-35 for this movie like he flew in F-14's in the last one (and because he has a gazillion of flight hours in various aircraft), I'm saying that there is no way.