
"Top Gun: Maverick" is released in cinemas this month, and while most of the film features real American navy planes, there is an 'exotic' tool that aviation fans may not recognize: the supersonic Darkstar.
'Darkstar' may not be a real plane, but it very much resembles such, as much as the Navy apparently told Top Gun producer, legendary director Jerry Bruckheimer, that China reoriented spy satellites to get a full view of the plane.
"The Navy told us that a Chinese spy satellite was reoriented into space to photograph that plane. They thought it was true," Bruckheimer told Sandboxx News.
Darkstar has an extraordinary resemblance to the artists' interpretations of Lockheed Martin's SR-71 Blackbird, SR-72 supersonic project. According to Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski, the film's director, they actually worked with engineers from Lockheed Martin's famous Shunk Works for design.