Tom Cruise's hot Mach 10 scramjet craft was inspired by the company's legendary Skunk Works' SR-72

Last month, we hinted that Lockheed Martin's super-secret experimental spy plane follow-up to the legendary SR-71 Blackbird, designated as the SR-72, might have made a cameo in the "Top Gun: Maverick" trailers. 

Now that the film has been released (check out our "Top Gun: Maverick" review for more) we can confirm that a modified variant of the mysterious conceptual SR-72 does indeed appear in the opening set piece in a manned form sporting a few fictional Hollywood touches and it definitely makes a bold impression! 

Those clips from the pre-release teasers showed Maverick suited up in an astronaut pressure suit while strapped into a futuristic aircraft that looked suspiciously like Lockheed Martin's clandestine successor to their iconic high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft from the Cold War.

The setup is that Tom Cruise's Maverick is employed as an Air Force test pilot who's dying to take a high-speed hop in the latest and greatest hypersonic plane called the Darkstar. But the powers that be are skeptical as to its capabilities have cut the program's budget and are about to pull the plug. Being the renegade that he is, Maverick disobeys orders to stand down and makes an unauthorized dash before the high-flying party ends.