F-20 Tigershark sales vid

[TeargasHorse]

Chuck Yeager approved!

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6BDgQwlfHII

[+daddyairplanes]

one of two the US should have gotten in the last 30 years.  the other being the F-23.....

[+ST0RM]

Gotta love the 80's. Ditto on what DA said. The plane that should have been.

 

-S

[+Coupi]

The Northrop pearl...

 

Thank you for the vid!

[von Baur]

The Air Force wanted a small, inexpensive figher to counter complaints about the money spent on the F-15 and F-16 (think of it as their version of a salary cap issue). So they took the back seat out of a T-38 Talon supersonic trainer and fitted it with weapons and modest avionics and, voila, the F-5 was born. Publicity tour, photo ops, "See, we're being responsible with your tax dollars". But it was never up to snuff with its big brothers. Northrop put bigger engines in it (along with some other upgrades, to be fair) and dubbed it the F-20. It quietly left the USAF inventory (although they may still use the T-38, I'm not sure, because it was/is an excellent trainer) after it started getting sold overseas as an affordable "front-line" fighter. I think some countries still use it. But God help the pilot if it ever has to go up against any serious fighters.

 

But it does have great lines.

 

As for Yeager, no disrespect intended but as I watched that I kept thinking about Robert Redford's character of Sonny in the early scenes of The Electric Horseman.

[+JediMaster]

As the F-5A first flew in 1959 and the F-5E in 1972, while the F-15 first flew in 1972 and the F-16 in 1974, I think you have your sequence of events a little backwards there.

 

The F-5 was never built for the US (although it was used for aggressor purposes), it was built for poor low-tech allies like South Vietnam that couldn't afford or maintain planes like the F-4.

 

The F-20 was built as a competitor to the F-16, but it never had a chance in the US, and the clearance to export the standard F-16A (as opposed to the doomed-to-fail F-16/79) killed any chance it had. But it was smaller than the F-16 and would never have lasted in production for over 40 years like the F-16 has because it would've run out of room long ago.

[+MigBuster]

Yeah the T-38 was from the same program - the single seat version was already there - they just developed the A/B a bit further before getting the MAP contracts - a few subtle differences.

 

F-16 was the low cost counter to the F-15 according to the Fighter Mafia