Northrop F-20 Tigershark

[F-16ADF]

International Airpower Review, Vol. 27 issue: F-20 Tigershark special.

F-20 Tigershark.pdf

(8.57 MiB) Downloaded 808 times

[Gums]

Salute!

interesting, for the most part accurate, too.

As likely the only member here that has actually flown the sim at Northrop and sat in the actual cockpit at Edwards preparing for my flight the next day, I feel I can support most of the accolades associated with that little beast.

My boss was the legal team representing Northrop in a lawsuit 1984-1985. McAir felt Northrop took too much of the F-18 avionics stuff to use in the F-20, primarily the hands-on switchology. Northrop vehemently disagreed and said it was the other way around. My job, along with two other experienced pilots, was to research other cockpit avionics in the "smart" planes as well as not-so-smart ones. Then we would testify in court. We were "vetted" by the systems engineering shop that developed the F-20 cockpit, then the legal team gave us a job offer. We were not evaluating aero performance or loadouts or logistics and such. As part of the deal we also traveled to St Louis and flew the F-18 sim, although the other two pilots on the team had F-18 experience, including one who was on the OT&E team for the thing. So I had 40 or 50 hours in the F-20 cockpit and about 4 or 5 in the F-18 cockpit.
===============================
- the avionics were superior to the existing F16 suite, primarily the inertial and the radar. That RLG thing was a delight, and you could taxi about the same time as you finished strapping in

- the cockpit layout was superior to anything in the air, with the F-18 a close second, then the A-7D/E.
The picture in the article must be from #1 plane, as the one I was gonna fly and practiced for had a larger HUD panel with more function buttons, and the combining glass portrayed looks a bit smaller. Some other things don't look right, either. Yeager was right, and the article echoed his praise - best human interface ever implemented.
The MFD's had "pop up" menus that Apple was just introducing on the Mac. So you could scroll down on a display item like range, mode, etc and if it had options thay would pop up! So move cursor to the range number and various ranges would show up, then scroll to the one you wanted and voila. The radio channel/freq selection was "smart", so it put in the decimal point and even figured out what radio you were fooling with or selecting a stored channel or a new/manual entry.

- the author nails the lack of foreign sales and USAF's resistance as the primary reasons the F-20 never made the cut. Having dealt with a few foreign officers when at Air University ( not the pilots I flew with in the Viper at Hill in the early days from Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Israel and Pakistan), I can tellya that some countries have a leader that wants at least one of the latest and greatest planes for his birthday flyby, not "second hand rose". So no F-20 but maybe a F-15 or Eurofighter or...

- my own personal opinion of the USAF lack of interest in the F-20 concerns missions. The F-20 would not have hacked it in Desert Storm due to poor loudout and abysmal range. The plane would have been the best interceptor known to man for point defence of a fairly small country only 200 or 300 miles wide and deep. It would not have been as good or better than anything else USAF or NATO folks had 30 years ago for CAS due to short "holding time" and limited loadout. For fairly short interdiction missions it would have been just fine, even with limited loadout.
============================
I certainly wished the lawyers would not have cancelled our flights at Edwards, but I understood. The rationale was that our oldest, most experienced pilot had flown everything under the sun, including the F-20 and the F-18 and the F-16 and... and. So if we flew the plane, then the McAir pilots on their team would have to be allowed the opportunity. And our guy had flown both planes and was widely respected - Chuck Yeager.

Gums sends...

[hornetfinn]

- my own personal opinion of the USAF lack of interest in the F-20 concerns missions. The F-20 would not have hacked it in Desert Storm due to poor loudout and abysmal range. The plane would have been the best interceptor known to man for point defence of a fairly small country only 200 or 300 miles wide and deep. It would not have been as good or better than anything else USAF or NATO folks had 30 years ago for CAS due to short "holding time" and limited loadout. For fairly short interdiction missions it would have been just fine, even with limited loadout.

Thank you Gums, very interesting. Here I think you just described Switzerland which did buy F-5E earlier. So if timing was right, Switzerland would likely have been interested in F-20. For their needs and situation, F-20 would've likely been very good choice. However they definitely could not do it by themselves, so some bigger customer would've been needed. And later they went with F/A-18C/D.

[viperzerof-2]

- my own personal opinion of the USAF lack of interest in the F-20 concerns missions. The F-20 would not have hacked it in Desert Storm due to poor loudout and abysmal range. The plane would have been the best interceptor known to man for point defence of a fairly small country only 200 or 300 miles wide and deep. It would not have been as good or better than anything else USAF or NATO folks had 30 years ago for CAS due to short "holding time" and limited loadout. For fairly short interdiction missions it would have been just fine, even with limited loadout.

Thank you Gums, very interesting. Here I think you just described Switzerland which did buy F-5E earlier. So if timing was right, Switzerland would likely have been interested in F-20. For their needs and situation, F-20 would've likely been very good choice. However they definitely could not do it by themselves, so some bigger customer would've been needed. And later they went with F/A-18C/D.

Taiwan was really the only other “big” buy. However they where bared due to improving relations with China at the time. A few smaller customers like Bahrain had actually pulled the trigger and ordered it but it wasn’t enough to make the program worthwhile.

[Gums]

Salute!

Yeppers, the plane was made to order for the Swiss when considering their "neutral" stance in most conflicts last coupla hundred years. I also thot about Thailand and Singapore and South Korea as great customers. At the time, we had forward units in South Korea and GD did a "fast one" to lower the price on their Vipers. I was there in the office at Hawthorne when details of the Viper offer went thru and the Northrop folks were really pissed.

From what I saw and heard at the coffee machine and then during their engineers' infamous Friday happy hour at a bar south of Hawthorne, they were banking on sales to the F-5 folks due to logistics and of course the immense capability.

The Korean crash happened about a week or so after I showed up and they were very depressed, as already preliminary findings were loss of control by the pilot and not a design problem. The second crash was after I had finished the lawsuit contract. The the Navy told both companies to knock it off, mainly 'cause they were both billing the Navy for legal fees and such!!! So the law firm had me pack up all my paperwork plus floppy discs and swear to keep a few things secret. I can't complain, as I made enough $$$ from October to April to pay off all credit cards, move to Florida and a full year of my son's college.

Gums sends...

[Corsair1963]

The F-20 would have needed a bigger wing to really exploit the power of the F404 and what would you have in the end? Just a competitor to the F-16. Which, clearly wasn't in the interests of the US nor the other F-16 Partners.


Honestly, never got this debate.......

[edpop]

Press photo:

[aaam]

The F-20 would have needed a bigger wing to really exploit the power of the F404 and what would you have in the end? Just a competitor to the F-16. Which, clearly wasn't in the interests of the US nor the other F-16 Partners.


Honestly, never got this debate.......

A bigger wing was always in the cards for the F-20. The reasons it wasn't in the initial offering were two-fold: During the Jimmy Carter "export fighter" days, it would be considered too much of an enhancement to be allowable under those rules. Later on when those restrictions were lifted there was the consideration on what incorporating such a wing would have on the purchase price of initial versions versus such an increase being more acceptable to potential customers once initial F-20s were in service.

Your second point is spot on, except substitute "USAF" for "US".

[aaam]

- my own personal opinion of the USAF lack of interest in the F-20 concerns missions. The F-20 would not have hacked it in Desert Storm due to poor loudout and abysmal range. The plane would have been the best interceptor known to man for point defence of a fairly small country only 200 or 300 miles wide and deep. It would not have been as good or better than anything else USAF or NATO folks had 30 years ago for CAS due to short "holding time" and limited loadout. For fairly short interdiction missions it would have been just fine, even with limited loadout.

Thank you Gums, very interesting. Here I think you just described Switzerland which did buy F-5E earlier. So if timing was right, Switzerland would likely have been interested in F-20. For their needs and situation, F-20 would've likely been very good choice. However they definitely could not do it by themselves, so some bigger customer would've been needed. And later they went with F/A-18C/D.

Taiwan was really the only other “big” buy. However they where bared due to improving relations with China at the time. A few smaller customers like Bahrain had actually pulled the trigger and ordered it but it wasn’t enough to make the program worthwhile.

Thomas Jones himself said that Taiwan was the big cutomer for which the Tigershark was aimed. When sales to that country were denied, it was very hard to put together a coalition for enough orders to justify putting the plane into production. There were a number of countries that were probably willing to be the second customer to order the F-20.

[basher54321]

Recent audio interview with Paul Metz

[viperzerof-2]

F-20 sales film with lots of nice stuff
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6BDgQwlfH ... cmNpYWw%3D
That spokesman looks familiar, I know him from some place.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VcNlOTu ... cmNpYWw%3D

Surprisingly enough a French car commercial with some amazing tigershark footage

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglev ... ommercial/

[hornetfinn]

Had to post this one here although it involves F-5 and not F-20... Crazy Norwegians...

[madrat]

It sounds like F-20 would have made a nice lead into F/A-18 sales.