F-20 Tigershark - V1 versus V2.2

[Olefin]

The F-20 is mentioned as being flown by Iran in the RDF module (V1) as the authors at the time they wrote it thought the F-20 would be going into production - which never happened. When the V2.2 came out there is no mention of the F-20 Tigershark in any of the releases for V2.2 – which may indicate that they took into account that the plane didn’t go into production – which by the time V2.2 was written was a fact.

So is the F-20 in the Twilight 2000 universe or is it highly dependent on which version you play? Reason I am asking is looking at the fighters that Kenya is flying in the East Africa Sourcebook - I wrote it initially more towards V1 – but it was approved as a V2.2 release so I had the Kenyan's keep the F-5's. If the F-20 had gone into production they would have been a customer for sure but didnt see it in the V2.2 as a reality.

Interested in the board’s opinions on if the F-20 is version dependent as to it being in Twilight 2000.

Paul does have it in his list of aircraft for the game.

[madmikechoi]

The F-20 is mentioned as being flown by Iran in the RDF module (V1) as the authors at the time they wrote it thought the F-20 would be going into production - which never happened. When the V2.2 came out there is no mention of the F-20 Tigershark in any of the releases for V2.2 – which may indicate that they took into account that the plane didn’t go into production – which by the time V2.2 was written was a fact.

So is the F-20 in the Twilight 2000 universe or is it highly dependent on which version you play? Reason I am asking is looking at the fighters that Kenya is flying in the East Africa Sourcebook - I wrote it initially more towards V1 – but it was approved as a V2.2 release so I had the Kenyan's keep the F-5's. If the F-20 had gone into production they would have been a customer for sure but didnt see it in the V2.2 as a reality.

Interested in the board’s opinions on if the F-20 is version dependent as to it being in Twilight 2000.


There's a bunch of shit that was in 1.0 that didn't make it to 2.0/2.2 for reasons- namely military budgets are not finite and at some point the juice ain't worth the squeeze.

The Northrup F-20 was probably one of the latter ones especially when Ronnie Raygun threw out the Jimmy Peanut export restrictions combined w/ the fact the US could not or wouldn't license a lot of the tech for production for countries who wanted the F-20 Taiwan and Korea (Starcraft kind not feed Hans Brix to sharks kind).

In the end there were two F-20ish like fighters the FA-50 which is powered by the GE F404 and regarded as a advanced/lead in fighter trainer/light fighter bomb truck and the Taiwanese F-CK-1 which had to forego P&W or GE turbofans in favor of two smaller afterburning Garretts/Honeywell which has a similar footprint of the old J85 used in the F-5s.

IOW any F-20 in Tw2k will only exist b/c the US will play ball and allow countries to crank out a significant portion of the a/c and/or foreign avionics integration although this would allow Big Navy to replace the F-5Es in their DACT syallbus at Fallon

[Olefin]

Its too bad that the people working on V2.2 never had a chance to go back thru and update the older modules - i.e. take out the LAV75 and replace it with the M8 AGS, update Iran with the timeline change and see how that changed the RDF and Kings Ransom, etc.

[swaghauler]

I'd just use the Jordanian F-5s since that's what Kenya uses.

[Vespers War]

There's a bunch of shit that was in 1.0 that didn't make it to 2.0/2.2 for reasons- namely military budgets are not finite and at some point the juice ain't worth the squeeze.

The Northrup F-20 was probably one of the latter ones especially when Ronnie Raygun threw out the Jimmy Peanut export restrictions combined w/ the fact the US could not or wouldn't license a lot of the tech for production for countries who wanted the F-20 Taiwan and Korea (Starcraft kind not feed Hans Brix to sharks kind).

In the end there were two F-20ish like fighters the FA-50 which is powered by the GE F404 and regarded as a advanced/lead in fighter trainer/light fighter bomb truck and the Taiwanese F-CK-1 which had to forego P&W or GE turbofans in favor of two smaller afterburning Garretts/Honeywell which has a similar footprint of the old J85 used in the F-5s.

IOW any F-20 in Tw2k will only exist b/c the US will play ball and allow countries to crank out a significant portion of the a/c and/or foreign avionics integration although this would allow Big Navy to replace the F-5Es in their DACT syallbus at Fallon

Another problem for Northrop was that because of the political considerations around the F-5G/F-20, only the State Department was allowed to market it, while McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics could market the F-15 and F-16 independent of the USG. By the time that policy was changed, the F-16C was available with the potential to carry Sparrow, which killed the F-20's main selling point over the F-16A.

The Taiwan sale fell apart because of an arrangement between the Reagan administration and the PRC. South Korea decided to build indigenously (though using the F-20's radar) after a Tigershark was crashed during a demonstration there, and the only other order was Bahrain requesting 4 aircraft, which wasn't enough to justify production. Once the F-16 had been selected for aggressor duties (due to GD massively underbidding the contract to freeze Northrop out), nobody international was willing to take a risk on an airplane the US wouldn't fly. The key to whether or not the F-20 is in service overseas is whether the F-16N sale happens. If the F-20 is bought for aggressor duties instead, maybe the international sales happen.

[cawest]

i would say that the F-20 is in service. any fighter that could be built would be. the f-20 would take the place of the f-16's that would be needed for the USAF and NATO. maybe a few AC 208's Armed Caravan they first few in 1982 so they might have been made earlier than in RL. Cessna would have production that "Front Line" units could not use..... until the nuks flew. and I do not think that Wichita KS caught one of those so production would last for some time. a few 7 round rocket pods or maybe a Javelin under a wing.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

As a complete aside, at one point a proposal was made for the RAAF to have a short-range point-defence fighter and a longer ranged interceptor-fighter.
The F/A-18 was already in RAAF service and would be the long-range interceptor and the proponents suggested the F-20 for the point-defence role.
The idea never progressed beyond paper because either the government or the air force (I can't recall exactly but it was one or the other) didn't want another aircraft in the stream but more importantly was that at the time (sometime in the late 1980s), the money was not likely to be forthcoming for extra fighter squadrons - especially if they were operating a different type of aircraft.

But in the T2k context, if you wanted to mess around with TOEs, if you wanted to have the F-20 in game, then perhaps an Australian purchase might be enough to get the production line started?
If I remember, the proposal called for a minimum of two and preferably about five point-defence squadrons. Five was never going to happen but two would have been a reasonable level with Flights detached to the various airfields where point-defence was needed.
So you would be looking at, at least two squadrons worth of the F-20 for the RAAF if you want to go with the idea. Again this was in the late 1980s so it would be before a version 2 timeline but maybe not quite soon enough for a version 1 timeline.

[Legbreaker]

Australia was never going to buy them. There simply wasn't the money available with interest rates here so high at the time (something like 20% and a recession).
There wasn't even enough money to pay for blank ammunition for training the units we did have!

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Australia was never going to buy them. There simply wasn't the money available with interest rates here so high at the time (something like 20% and a recession).
There wasn't even enough money to pay for blank ammunition for training the units we did have!
I remember those days... the dark times... where we had to keep accounts of kilometres travelled for every vehicle so they could decide when we were allowed to have new tyres or track links, the times where as a Reservist we had to take our own food on weekend training because there was no budget to cater for meals while out bush.
It was at that time that I seriously considered leaving the ARes. The few things that kept me in was my mates in the unit, the high quality of officers the unit had at the time and a training WO who would drive the 600 klicks to Perth to secure needed equipment for the training weekends from a "certain" regiment the unit had a good working relationship with (they used our base for their desert, demo and car commander's training courses)

But I digress...
I agree that Australia did not have the money for anything extra let alone a new fighter type for the air force. However for the T2k world, I think it's something that can be worked around if there's a third world war looming, but to each their own.

[Legbreaker]

I did my recruit course with about 400 other people (including staff). For one entire week we all had to share a grand total of just sixteen (16) pounds of fresh meat because the budget simply didn't allow for any more! Needless to say there were a LOT of vegetarian "options" and given we were in the field at the time, in the middle of winter, AND it was pouring with rain for 6 out of those 7 days.....
Then the cooks sent out some nice, steaming hot porridge for breakfast to apologise. Went down great until somebody noticed the additional meat ration in it - riddled with weevils!
For that same week we had an average of 11 blank rounds per person, with NO resupply. Fun times....

[StainlessSteelCynic]

WEEVILS! You lucky bastards! We used to dream of weevils in our porridge... if we actually got any porridge!
(With apologies to Monty Python's Life of Brian).


But yes, bad times indeed, I recall the "half-magazine" of blanks to last for the entire Ex and 30-rds of blank link for the gun... being put into the demeaning position of having to yell out "Bang" when we ran out of blanks.
When we finally got to do grenade training, the OC and training WO encouraged everyone to attend because they didn't know when we'd be able to train with live grenades again so it was being treated as a "once in a lifetime" event.

[Targan]

I count myself lucky that things were on the up when I joined the ARes.

[Legbreaker]

WEEVILS! You lucky bastards! We used to dream of weevils in our porridge... if we actually got any porridge!

I still ate it, even if most didn't....

Bang was only for the rifles! Machinegunners had to yell out bursts of "buckets of bullets"!
We had one guy who got so good at imitating the M16 that everyone thought he had a secret stash of ammo he was using. You seriously couldn't tell the difference!

[Legbreaker]

4229

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I suppose with the cancellation of Israel's indigenous Lavi fighter in 1987, they might have been open to the purchase of the F-20, particularly as the F-16 couldn't operate the AIM-7 missile but the F-20 could.
In the real world, the Lavi lost out to the cheaper F-16 but if Northrop had been allowed to market the F-20 they may have been more effective in getting sales than the State Department (who held the rights to market the aircraft and seemed uninterested in doing so).

[Olefin]

4229

Ok that is funny as hell - is that an official meme for this group?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Ok that is funny as hell - is that an official meme for this group?

HAHAHAHA, you know Olefin, I believe you're on to something here. :D
That probably should be the official meme for the Aussies here when we start waffling on about the "old days". :rolleyes:

[pmulcahy11b]

Paul does have it in his list of aircraft for the game.

Yeah, I should probably move the F-20 to the Best Aircraft That Never Were pages.

[Olefin]

Yeah, I should probably move the F-20 to the Best Aircraft That Never Were pages.

probably the best idea - its just one of those things that are another V1 "fill in the blank that never happened" versus reality

[RN7]

Only 3 prototypes of the F-20 Tigershark were built but it was agile and competitive against some earlier versions of the F-16. But it was cancelled in 1982 long before the Twilight War broke out, so I think it was unlikely that it would ever have been brought back as it would have needed a lot of development and upgrades to make it competitive in the mid-to-late1990's.

That been said there are a load of anomalies between V.1 and V.2, with many of them stemming from RDF Sourcebook.

The French Air Force KC-110 never existed
The French Navy missile cruiser Jean Bart never existed.
The French Mirage 4000 fighter was never built accept for 1 prototype
The Iranian Air Force never used the British Tornado fighter-bomber
The Iranian Army never operated the British Challenger Tank
The Iranian Army never operated the Bell AH-1T helicopter or any version of the Cobra
The Iranian Army never operated the UH-60 helicopter
The Soviet Mi-17 transport helicopter never existed.
The US Air Force never operated the Hughes 530 helicopter
The US Navy never operated the French Brequet Atlantique
The US Navy never operated the Dutch Fokker F-27
The US Navy frigate FFG-25 USS Boone is actually USS Copeland
The US Navy frigate FFG-28 USS Copeland is actually USS Boone

[Legbreaker]

The Soviet Mi-17 transport helicopter never existed.

Reality begs to differ.
http://www.military-today.com/helicopters/mi_17.htm

[pmulcahy11b]

The Iranian Army never operated the British Challenger Tank
They were all set to buy large amounts of the Challenger 1. but this deal was scotched by the Iranian Revolution. The British tried to fill Iran's immediate need for a modern tank by offering them an upgraded Chieftain; these too were cancelled by the Revolution. However, the Jordanians saw that the British had 125 tanks they had no use for, asked for a few more upgrades, and still got them at a bargain price. They call them the Shir 2.

The Soviet Mi-17 transport helicopter never existed.
Not true; the Mi-17 is a progressive improvement of thr Mi-8. I will grant you that the Iranians might not have them in T2K; it depends on how close they were to the Soviets in the T2K timeline.

The US Air Force never operated the Hughes 530 helicopter
True, but the Nightstalkers did operate then and do to this day.

The US Navy never operated the Dutch Fokker F-27
The Navy does have a few of them, but probably not in the T2K timeline.
The Army operates a good number also. They are handy jump aircraft in SOCOM, and they have found the F-27 can be modified for "additional uses."

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Only 3 prototypes of the F-20 Tigershark were built but it was agile and competitive against some earlier versions of the F-16. But it was cancelled in 1982 long before the Twilight War broke out... <snip>

The information you have is incorrect, it's first flight was in 1982 and while the F-20 project was officially cancelled in 1986, it was still considered a possibility for foreign sales into the late 80s.
There is a New York Times article dated 9th May, 1989 commenting on reprimands at Northrop for attempting to sell the F-20 to South Korea.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/09/business/a-reprimand-at-northrop.html

Edit: Meant to say as well that the Iranian Army did operate the AH-1J in a modified form (officially it was the AH-1J International). In 1971 the Iranians purchased 202 of them to be operated by Imperial Iranian Army Aviation (and then later by the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation). While the Iranian Army did not operate the AH-1T, the -1J is of the same "Super Cobra" family. So technically they did not operate the Cobra, they operated the Super Cobra but that's really just semantics.

[Olefin]

Its one thing that was never really resolved between V1 and V2.2 - i.e. in V1 the Iranians eventually overthrew the government and put one in that was much more friendly to the West - thus the Western equipment that was operated by Iran and the fact that the US came to their aid and didnt have to fight their way ashore against a hostile Iran and a hostile Soviet Union

One thing that has always been understood is that V1 and V2.2 were basically interchangeable once the war started as to the published modules - i.e. you could use a V1 module in the V2.2 timeline you just make some changes for equipment (i.e the giraffe version of the M1 is now the M1A2 of our reality) and the change from Soviet troops in Vietnam to Soviet troops in the Kuriles (i.e. Japan is now much more directly involved in the war)

The question is did the RDF and by extension Kings Ransom still occur as is - i.e. the Iranians overthrew the revolutionary govt and re-established ties with the West - which would be a further POD from our reality beyond just Yeltsin and his guys eating it at the hands of the KGB and preserving the Soviet Union?

If so then at least the "where did the Iranians get British tanks and US helos as part of their equipment" part of the question raised above is somewhat resolved

Otherwise you have to look at a very different RDF for V2.2 - one where the US forces probably would have had to have been bigger to actually survive if they had to have fought their way onshore against the Iranians and then withstood the Soviets as well - which is not the V1 situation at all

[RN7]

Reality begs to differ.
http://www.military-today.com/helicopters/mi_17.htm

That was Mi-27. Sorry typo

[RN7]

The Iranian Army never operated the British Challenger Tank
They were all set to buy large amounts of the Challenger 1. but this deal was scotched by the Iranian Revolution. The British tried to fill Iran's immediate need for a modern tank by offering them an upgraded Chieftain; these too were cancelled by the Revolution. However, the Jordanians saw that the British had 125 tanks they had no use for, asked for a few more upgrades, and still got them at a bargain price. They call them the Shir 2.

The Soviet Mi-17 transport helicopter never existed.
Not true; the Mi-17 is a progressive improvement of thr Mi-8. I will grant you that the Iranians might not have them in T2K; it depends on how close they were to the Soviets in the T2K timeline.

The US Air Force never operated the Hughes 530 helicopter
True, but the Nightstalkers did operate then and do to this day.

The US Navy never operated the Dutch Fokker F-27
The Navy does have a few of them, but probably not in the T2K timeline.
The Army operates a good number also. They are handy jump aircraft in SOCOM, and they have found the F-27 can be modified for "additional uses."


The Iranian Revolution killed off all Western arms exports to Iran. The Iranians had ordered the Chieftain Mk.5 (P), Shir 1 and Shir 2 before the revolution, and the Shir-2 was reworked in Britain in the aftermath of the cancelled order and became the Challenger 1. All versions of the Iranian Chieftain tanks were unlikely to have been fitted with Cobham armour. T2K does state that Iran became more friendly with the West before the Twilight War started, but I doubt they received any Challenger I's from Britain as the British Army was building up its strength for the war in Europe and would not have been able to spare them from its already relatively limited stocks.

Mi-17 was a typo, it should have been Mi-27. The Mi-27 never existed.

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Nightstalkers ) is part of the US Army

The US Navy VOJ-24 operated 4 Fokker F-27 and 2 Brequet Atlantique as naval air units under USAF control. The Atlantique is a marine-patrol or anti-submarine aircraft and by assumption the F-27 would be the marine patrol version (F-27 200-MAR or Maritime Enforcer), as the US Navy has no real use for a troop transport like the US Army C-31A Troopship. The F-27 200-MAR was never used by any US forces.

[RN7]

The information you have is incorrect, it's first flight was in 1982 and while the F-20 project was officially cancelled in 1986, it was still considered a possibility for foreign sales into the late 80s.
There is a New York Times article dated 9th May, 1989 commenting on reprimands at Northrop for attempting to sell the F-20 to South Korea.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/09/business/a-reprimand-at-northrop.html

Edit: Meant to say as well that the Iranian Army did operate the AH-1J in a modified form (officially it was the AH-1J International). In 1971 the Iranians purchased 202 of them to be operated by Imperial Iranian Army Aviation (and then later by the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Aviation). While the Iranian Army did not operate the AH-1T, the -1J is of the same "Super Cobra" family. So technically they did not operate the Cobra, they operated the Super Cobra but that's really just semantics.


You are right I made another typo like I did with the Mi-27 (Mi-17!!). Sorry I was typing in a hurry

However only 3 F-20 Tigershark were ever made. Once Ronald Reagan got elected as US President in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and relaxed arms exports to Western Allies the F-20 was never really going to fly. There was interest in the F-20 from other countries but that interest faded once other US combat aircraft were available for export. The US was building the F-15, F-16, F-18 at the time and was willing to export them.

The F-20 was competitive against an F-16 powered with a PW F100 jet engine (the export model), but it lacked the range and weapons load of this version of the F-16. Against an F-16 powered by a GE F110 jet engine (the USAF model) the F-20 lost all of its aerodynamic competiveness.

Northrop was also the prime contractor for the B-2 Stealth Bomber which was being developed in the 1980's and didn't push the DOD to much about its lack of interest in the F-20.

The Iranians used the single-engine AH-1 prior to the Iranian Revolution, but not the twin-engine AH-1T as listed in RDF Sourcebook.

[RN7]

Its one thing that was never really resolved between V1 and V2.2 - i.e. in V1 the Iranians eventually overthrew the government and put one in that was much more friendly to the West - thus the Western equipment that was operated by Iran and the fact that the US came to their aid and didnt have to fight their way ashore against a hostile Iran and a hostile Soviet Union

One thing that has always been understood is that V1 and V2.2 were basically interchangeable once the war started as to the published modules - i.e. you could use a V1 module in the V2.2 timeline you just make some changes for equipment (i.e the giraffe version of the M1 is now the M1A2 of our reality) and the change from Soviet troops in Vietnam to Soviet troops in the Kuriles (i.e. Japan is now much more directly involved in the war)

The question is did the RDF and by extension Kings Ransom still occur as is - i.e. the Iranians overthrew the revolutionary govt and re-established ties with the West - which would be a further POD from our reality beyond just Yeltsin and his guys eating it at the hands of the KGB and preserving the Soviet Union?

If so then at least the "where did the Iranians get British tanks and US helos as part of their equipment" part of the question raised above is somewhat resolved

Otherwise you have to look at a very different RDF for V2.2 - one where the US forces probably would have had to have been bigger to actually survive if they had to have fought their way onshore against the Iranians and then withstood the Soviets as well - which is not the V1 situation at all


The Iranians might have got some equipment but I think it would depend on the relative sophistication of the equipment and its availability.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

You're correct, the Iranians didn't use the AH-1T but that was not what I was saying. I said they operated a similar type, specifically, the AH-1J International, which they have copied to create their Toufan and Toufan II attack helicopters.
The GDW authors were incorrect to state the helo was the AH-1T but it's possible they believed that theIrianian -1J model was the -1T or even that maybe they didn't have knowledge of the -1J model and assumed that substituting it would be okay for the game. Maybe it was a typo by the printer?

We'll probably never know but as the Iranian revolution was in 1978-79 and the purchase of the AH-1J was in 1971 it's not too much to assume that deliveries were pretty much complete before the revolution so no matter what the reason, the Iranians did have a twin-engine version of the Cobra in service before the events of the game.

[Vespers War]

You're correct, the Iranians didn't use the AH-1T but that was not what I was saying. I said they operated a similar type, specifically, the AH-1J International, which they have copied to create their Toufan and Toufan II attack helicopters.
The GDW authors were incorrect to state the helo was the AH-1T but it's possible they believed that theIrianian -1J model was the -1T or even that maybe they didn't have knowledge of the -1J model and assumed that substituting it would be okay for the game. Maybe it was a typo by the printer?

We'll probably never know but as the Iranian revolution was in 1978-79 and the purchase of the AH-1J was in 1971 it's not too much to assume that deliveries were pretty much complete before the revolution so no matter what the reason, the Iranians did have a twin-engine version of the Cobra in service before the events of the game.

Some of the Iranian AH-1J were TOW-capable; AFAIK, US AH-1J didn't have that capability, only the -1T. Someone hearing Iran had TOW-capable SuperCobras could be excused for thinking they were AH-1T if they were familiar with the versions used by the US. There was also a proposal to sell Iran the AH-1T+ with an engine upgrade, but that deal fell apart when the Shah was overthrown.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Some of the Iranian AH-1J were TOW-capable; AFAIK, US AH-1J didn't have that capability, only the -1T. Someone hearing Iran had TOW-capable SuperCobras could be excused for thinking they were AH-1T if they were familiar with the versions used by the US. There was also a proposal to sell Iran the AH-1T+ with an engine upgrade, but that deal fell apart when the Shah was overthrown.

Good point, I had forgotten about that. I believe 62 or 64 of the 1971 purchase was TOW-capable, so yes, definite potential for confusion right there.