"They've got to take risks," says Robert Rubel, a graduate of the U.S. Navy's "Top Gun" academy and now dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. "I've lost control of every airplane I've ever tried to fly."
In the Chinese version of Top Gun, the equivalent of "Maverick" is a hotshot, risk-taking wing commander who arrives to drag the PLA Air Force into the 21st century. The lead characters in the 2010 film, Skyfighters, wear aviator sunglasses and chase attractive female instructors who drive motorbikes fast along military airstrips. The main difference from the original is that the red team is always the good guys shooting at the blue, rather than the other way around.
The moral of the film is that in the PLA's new "scientific" environment -- shown as a future ideal in contrast to a moribund status quo -- pilots will be rewarded for showing initiative, flying under combat-like pressure, and taking risks even if they occasionally scratch the paint work.
The hero, Commander Yue, has the Tom Cruise character's appetite for high-octane adventure but is otherwise free of his preternatural ego. His "scientific outlook" -- a term from the Hu Jintao era -- is benchmarked against international best practice and juxtaposed against his vanquished deputy, who prefers to quote aphorisms about controlling remote armies from a tent like Mao did before 1949 at the Red Army base camp of Xibaipo.
Abandoning old thinking doesn't make the New Age PLA Man politically unreliable. To the contrary, Commander Yue cracks jokes about the U.S. president, talks constantly about war, and is prepared to sacrifice his life to save the national hardware.
The film aims to challenge deep conventions in China's risk-averse system, where decisions are avoided or made by consensus high up in the hierarchy. And yet this film about how the PLA is breaking from dysfunctional, committee-driven micromanagement is littered with incidental signs that suggest it may not be possible.
It opens with a pilot who narrowly escapes being court-martialed for an unavoidable accident -- his Su-27 hitting a bird -- which seems to underscore why ambitious Chinese pilots may be better off sticking to the ground. Commander Yue cannot wield full authority because he has to defer to a political commissar, who has no professional knowledge, and he is constantly second-guessed by a deputy who is playing on his bureaucratic home turf.
And when Commander Yue's J-10 spins out of control attempting Maverick's "cobra" move -- "I'll hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" -- ancient habits of centralized, hierarchical control seem inescapable. "Check the oil ... watch your altitude," instructs his deputy commander from the control tower, as if that would help a pilot who would be clenching his entire body to push blood to his brain and avoid passing out.
American and Australian commanders are required to delegate responsibility as far down the chain as possible, and pilots are trained to be trusted to make their own decisions, according to veterans of those systems. They work through endless emergency procedure simulators to internalize key parameters and make instant decisions without need for radio contact. Nothing is hammered into a pilot's head more deeply than the decision to eject at a set altitude when out of control.
SUBJECTS:
