F-35 embarrassed by Tom Cruise's new Top Gun movie going with its older competitor, the F-18

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The new "Top Gun" won't feature the US Navy's top fighter jet.

• Actor Tom Cruise tweeted a teaser for the long-awaited sequel to the movie "Top Gun" on Thursday, and in doing so wandered into one of the most heated debates in modern combat aviation and delivered a savage burn to the F-35.
• The F-35C, the US Navy's long overdue, massively expensive new carrier aircraft is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the F-18 Super Hornet, the F-35's main competitor, can be seen. 
• It's an embarrassment to the F-35 program that mounting setbacks have pushed it out of a potentially massive public relations boost, and instead the boon went to its older competitor. 

Actor Tom Cruise tweeted a teaser for the long-awaited sequel to the movie "Top Gun" on Thrusday, and in doing so wandered into one of the most heated debates in modern combat aviation and delivered a savage burn to the F-35.

The original "Top Gun" film was nothing short of a revelation for the US Navy. Men and women around the US and the world saw fighter jets in a whole new light, and naval aviation recruitment shot up by 500%.

A new "Top Gun" movie, now 32 years after the first, could potentially again spike interest in combat aviation at a time when the US military struggles to retain and attract top talent. But for the most expensive weapons system in history, it already looks like a bust. 

Here's the poster for the new "Top Gun."

Notice anything? The F-35C, the US Navy's long overdue, massively expensive new carrier aircraft is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the F-18 Super Hornet, the F-35's main competitor, can be seen. 

The F-35 community was not thrilled. 

"Everybody that's flown a fighter in the last 25 years, we all watched Top Gun," retired US Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Berke, who flew F-35s and actually attended the US Navy's Top Gun school, previously told Business Insider.

"Damn shame," Berke said in response to the new movie's choice of fighter. "I guess it will be a movie about the past!"

While experts agree that the F-35's carrier-based variant, the F-35C, and its vertical takeoff sister, the F-35B, represent the future of naval aviation, they're just not ready for the big time yet.

The F-35B had its first operational deployment in 2018 in the Pacific, but the F-35C remains a ways off from adoption onto the US Navy's fleet of aircraft supercarriers. Persistent problems with launching the sophisticated airplane off a moving ship at sea have pushed back the schedule and resulted in huge cost overruns. 

Meanwhile, the F-18 Super Hornet continues to do the lion's share of combat aviation work aboard aircraft carriers, and its maker, Boeing, has even offered an updated version of the plane that President Donald Trump entertained buying instead of the F-35.

In short, it's an embarrassment to the F-35 program that mounting setbacks have pushed it out of a potentially massive public relations boost.

"It's a capable aircraft," retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies, told Business Insider of the Super Hornet. "It's just last century's design."

"It is a missed opportunity," admitted Deptula.

Berke pointed out that the new "Top Gun" producers may have gone with the Super Hornet over the F-35 because the Super Hornet has two seats, which could facilitate filming and possibly on-screen dynamics. 

Popular aviation blog The Aviationist also pointed out that Cruise is holding an outdated helmet, and the photo does not appear to take place at the US Navy's Top Gun school, but Hollywood sometimes makes mistakes.

"Hollywood doesn't build movies around what makes sense, they build movies around what makes money," said Deptula. 

But despite what might have come as a slight sting to F-35 boosters hoping a new film could help usher in what they call a revolution in combat aviation, both Berke and Deptula said they were looking forward to the film.