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Old 06-01-2009, 06:48 AM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
So what ended up happening with the F-20 Tigershark. I know, I could just go unleash some Google-Fu to find out but I'm confident one or more of you clever forumites will be able to tell me in a nice, concise way. And for that matter what would happen to the F-20 Tigershark in the T2K (version 1) timeline?

Edit: Slow day at work (public holiday in my state) so I've had a bit of a look at Wikipedia's entry on the Tigershark. As far as I can tell it (and its predecessors the F-5E and F5-G) were a very good designs, quite cheap considering their performance and were very much viable but Northrop was repeatedly shafted by the policies of the Carter and subsequent administrations. So, in the T2K world might the Tigershark or something much like it have ended up being much more common in the air forces of countries allied to the USA? All it would take would be for the Regan administration to have been a bit more paranoid about things like selling F-16s to Pakistan and Bob's your uncle.
The DC Group has decided to put the F-20 into full scale production as an export fighter. (It is also mentioned in service in Iran in canon, in RDF sourcebook and Challenge magazine). Basically it was sold as a replacement for F-5s in service with a number of US Allies - especially China and Iran, but also Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and possibly Mexico.

It was produced at the same plants that turn out F/A-18s. As the demand from the US military for F/A-18s increases, production of F-20s is switched to facilities that were converted to military aircraft production - notably the Gulfstream business jet production plant in Savannah, Georgia and the Cessna, Lear and Beechcraft business jet plants in Wichita and Independence, Kansas.
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