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 “Top Gun: Maverick” shows secret plane infographic
Graphic shows details of SR-72 hypersonic aircraft.
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Tom Cruise’s latest move offers peek at secret jet

By Jordi Bou

June 10, 2022 - The Darkstar hypersonic jet in Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster movie, “Top Gun: Maverick”, offers a peek at what might be the SR-72 – the super-secret experimental spy plane under development by Lockheed Martin.

To help director Joseph Kosinski and Paramount Pictures, engineers from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works partnered with the Top Gun production team to design what might be a variant of their hypersonic SR-72 plane with a few modifications to make it look even cooler on the big screen as both a full-sized physical mock-up and an airborne CGI version.

Conceptual renderings of the SR-72 released over the past few years bear striking resemblance to the Darkstar and speculations have swarmed around it since the $170 million film went into pre-production way back in 2017.

In real-life, the SR-72 has yet to officially take its first flight, which is due to occur sometime next year.

It has been rumoured that the plane would have an advanced propulsion system revolving around a turbine-based combined cycle, which is the fusion of a modified fighter turbine engine with a dual-mode ramjet.

This type of hybrid engine would launch the Darkstar jet towards the heavens at the staggering speed of 7,400km-per-hour!

Sources
PUBLISHED: 10/06/2022; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Lockheed Martin, Paramount Pictures
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