New Top Gun recruits wanted to join Australian Navy

The Australian Navy has been looking for ways to find new recruits — and now Tom Cruise’s new movie Top Gun: Maverick can help.

When the American action drama Top Gun: Maverick premieres, Australia’s top military brass will be taking notes for future military recruitment campaigns.

After the first instalment of the hit film starring Tom Cruise, recruitment for the US Navy (USN) rose 500 per cent to the point the USN set up recruiting booths outside theatres to tap into the interest.

With plans announced earlier this year to urgently grow the Australian Defence Force ranks to their biggest levels since the Vietnam War, the Royal Australian Navy’s deputy chief Rear Admiral Chris Smith says maverick recruitment campaigns were on the cards.

Scene from Top Gun: Maverick. Photo: Paramount

These included feeding into TAFE, universities and schools but also anything that shows the human side of the military.

And, yes, if that meant TV drama Sea Patrol on the big screen or a Top Gun flick then it had the ADF’s support.

Rear Admiral Smith, who is also Head of Navy People, Training and Resources, and formerly in command of the closest thing Australia has to an aircraft carrier, HMAS Canberra, said the days of recruitment with big posters of big ships and aircraft were gone.

Instead he said it was footage and stories of real people with real lives enjoying a work and life balance.

Deputy Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral Chris Smith, CSM, RAN. Picture: Supplied

RADM Smith said capability did not just mean fighting platforms but personnel and the new $38 million recruitment target – to see the ranks to swell by 18,500 personnel to a force of 101,000 – was essential for the force modernisation, including new skills in areas such as nuclear tech, drone warfare and artificial intelligence.

He said movies like Top Gun and Australia’s TV Sea Patrol series (2007-2011) assisted in raising awareness of military lives.

“Sea Patrol, to me, I mean a lot of people look back at it and cringe from a navy perspective, but to me I found it fascinating because of the sailors,” he said yesterday.

Cast of the TV series Sea Patrol.

“You look at all the pictures around you and, historically, there are pictures of ships and submarines and it’s very hard to see the human side of that. Then Sea Patrol came out and, all of a sudden, we’re going inside the ship and suddenly there was a community and there was people that were engaging in the space there, and they had lives and they had human interaction.

“So I do think that, as a Navy, anything we can do to show that inside those ships are communities – and I know I had command of HMS Canberra, so up to 1200 people on board at different times, 400 ships company and some of the best days of sea in my career were on board that ship surrounded by 400 people – which is a vibrant community of young people doing amazing things.”

For the latest jobs go to the Australian Navy’s website.