For a film with so much US military involvement there was a huge amount of military "issues" in the final attack which could/should have been tweaked to make the film even better.
1. SA-3 GOA Surface to Air Missiles - this is a 1961 radar guided missile so completely out of place in a country with 5th Gen aircraft being used to defend a high value target, plus there wasn't a single guidance radar (the thing which steers the SA-3 missiles) in-sight. A simple CGI change to SA-22 or SA-27 (if they wanted real-world weapons) would have worked and still kept in the "it's Russia but not really Russia" theme but even a change to something non-real would've worked too.
2. IR Flares used to decoy Radar Guided SAM's
3. Laser Pod - The cross-hairs are automatically held on target using a contrast lock, so the aircrew themselves don't need to manually keep the cross-hairs on the target once the lock is made, it's done automatically since the early 90's - it's a nice touch to ramp the audience tension though.
4. Rooster not knowing how Swing-Wings worked during the taxi-way take-off ("why are you sweeping the wings forward" question).
5. Rooster knowing where the flares button was on an aircraft he'd never flown in before (adding a 5 second clip of Mav saying "here's the flare switch" whilst talking about radios/radar etc would have covered it). Additionally, the Flare button on the F/A-18E/F is on the throttle, not a big red "press me now" thing (would've been easy to film correctly) and the same with the F-14 where it's on the back seat "grab handle" sticks.
6. With an aircraft suffering so much battle damage, "doing a tower fly-by" would be the very last thing Mav would've been doing.
7. Wingmen - Hangman would have flown with a wingman when he saved Mav, there is never just a single lone jet sent out into known combat and he'd have jettisoned his Bombs/External Fuel Tanks after take-off to prep his aircraft for A-A fighting
8. G-Forces - All fast-jet pilots train for 9G, many have pulled that during actual flying too. Although Mav makes mention of "you've done G-Force training" it still makes out that 9G is some mythical/magical figure, it's not, it's fairly common in 4th Gen aircraft
9. Straining against the control stick with two hands - The F/A-18E/F uses Fly-By Wire like a PC joystick with no mechanical linkage between the stick and moving surfaces which have 3000psi of hydraulic pressure to actually move them so, other than the joysticks centring spring pressure (same a PC joystick), you're not straining hard to pull a stick. In fact only "active" sticks (those with a force-feedback system) used by 5th Gen (and Typhoon) work like the movie does as these will use the force-feedback motors in the stick to stiffen it, preventing the pilot from damaging the aircraft by being limiting the range of movement to keep the aircraft safe.
Again, absolutely none of these changed my enjoyment of the film, but it would've been nice to change the CGI SA-3's for something better if I could've had the film-makers change one thing on my list
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