‘Top Gun: Maverick’ studio paid U.S Navy more than $11,000 an hour for fighter jet rides—but Tom Cruise wasn’t allowed to touch the controls

The Navy lent Tom Cruise F/A-18 Super Hornets for his movie. The studio paid as much as $11,372 an hour to use the advanced fighter planes, but Cruise couldn't touch the controls.

The star of the film insisted that the actors fly in one of the fighter jets built for the film. The original Top Gun was a smash hit in 1986, and Cruise flew in a jet for it.

Glen Roberts, the chief of the Pentagon's entertainment media office, said that a Pentagon regulation bars non-military personnel from controlling a Defense Department asset other than small arms in training scenarios. The actors rode behind the F/A-18 pilots after completing required training on how to survive at sea.

Roberts said the Navy allowed the production to use planes, aircraft carriers and military bases even though he said the real Top Gun pilots wouldn't exist in naval aviation.

Roberts said that a movie doesn't have to be a love letter to the military to win Pentagon cooperation. Filmmakers need to have funding and distribution for their project, and be willing to submit their script for military review, to ensure the integrity of the military. Although the Pentagon can request changes, Roberts said he wasn't aware of any.

Paramount Pictures said in production notes for the film that Cruise created his own demanding flight training program for the movie's young actors so that they could endure the nausea-inducing aerial maneuvers and perform their roles with real Navy pilots taking them on.

The movie will be released this week after being delayed. Scenes were shot aboard the ship in August of last year during a training exercise involving the military's F-35C Lightning II fighter jet. The production was filmed at Naval Air Station Lemoore.

The movie's script called for the Super Hornet to be the main jet in the movie over the F-35C. The actors couldn't ride in the F-35 because it's a single-seat plane.

If the aircraft are already being used in a previously scheduled training exercise or the flight can be counted toward the pilot's required time at the controls, the Pentagon will reimburse the filmmakers. The going rate for the jets was $11,374 in the year of Top Gun: Maverick.