At the time it was widely known that the Bad Guy in Top Gun was the USSR. The script had been launched and had gotten all the cooperation of the Navy due to KAL007 and in the spirit of Able Archer. Then Andropov and Chernenko gave way to Gorbachev and the US started pointing towards INF and things started getting a little less jingoistic. As I recall the dogfights where you actually saw the colors were pickups because things were sensitive and the Navy wanted to be able to sway which way things went.Matthew Modine turned down the Tom Cruise role because he objected to the film's Cold War politics. Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Sean Penn, Michael J. Fox, Scott Baio and Tom Hanks all turned down the role of Maverick.