The movie Top Gun was the 1986 smash hit that launched Tom Cruise’s career, but the real start of that movie was the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
As Brandon J. Weichert notes in his National Interest article the key feature of the F-14 was its range. Retired by the US Navy in 2006, the F-14 has a combat range of more than 400 nautical miles beyond the current F-18 Hornet and over 600 to 1,000 nautical miles compared to the F-35 Lightning II.
F-16 Variable-Wing Concept and relative size. NotLessOrEqual, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The range of the Tomcat has come into importance as the US Navy stares down the threat from near-peer adversaries in the Pacific region.
With the Tomcat’s selection in the 1970s, the US Navy chose a different doctrine than the US Air Force. The Air Force followed the “High-Low” Mix concept from Col. John Boyd with the F-16 Falcon selection for a multi-role “low” attack fighter and the F-15 Eagle for a “High” air-dominance fighter.
The F-35 and F-22 are intended to replace the F-16 and F-15 respectively in the High-Low Mix doctrine.