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Meet the F-20 Tigershark: The Fighter Jet the Air Force Said No To | The National Interest:
The F-20 Tigershark program was abandoned in 1986 after three prototypes had been built (two of which crashed after their pilots blacked out due to excessive g-forces) and a fourth partially completed.
The F-20 Tigershark (initially F-5G) was a privately financed light fighter, designed and built by Northrop. Its development began in 1975. The aircraft which was a further evolution of Northrop’s F-5E Tiger II, was powered by a new engine that greatly improved overall performance, and a modern avionics suite that included a powerful and flexible radar.
Super ace Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, once said that “of all the airplanes in the world that I’ve flown, the F-5 is the most fun to fly.”
Compared with the F-5E, the F-20 was much faster, gained beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air capability, and had a full suite of air-to-ground modes capable of firing most U.S. weapons. Thanks to these improvements, the F-20 became competitive with contemporary fighter designs such as the General Dynamics F-16/79 (a modified export-oriented version of the F-16A/B designed for use with the outdated General Electric J79 turbojet engine), but was much less expensive to purchase and operate...........read rest of article
F-20 Tigershark: Details
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