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 didnt 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 boards 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 didnt 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 boards 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]

[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).