From a more technical standpoint on the film's accuracy, leaving aside the Navy would allow a 60-year-old (or 57 to be specific since Top Gun 2 was supposed to release in 2019) to be on active duty flying frontline missions still,
that he's already crashed a jet not once but twice (the F-14 and the Dark Star) would've surely had his wings clipped and not be allow to return to flight status.
First time he was exonerated, a case could still be made to let him continue to fly. But the second time? After he'd already disobeyed a direct order to stand down, took the only experimental prototype and intentionally over-stressed the hull beyond its designed limits so that it disintegrated mid-flight yet still managed to physically bail out while travelling at Mach 10+ and somehow came out unscathed?
First time he was exonerated, a case could still be made to let him continue to fly. But the second time? After he'd already disobeyed a direct order to stand down, took the only experimental prototype and intentionally over-stressed the hull beyond its designed limits so that it disintegrated mid-flight yet still managed to physically bail out while travelling at Mach 10+ and somehow came out unscathed?
Yeah you're done flying. He was lucky he wasn't court-martialled and dismissed from the service at the least.
