F-20, the best plane that never entered production

Or a hypothetical future service model such as with the Yak-141. One with access to amraams.

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That would be an interesting addition I might personally enjoy seeing as an event option, however the Yak-141 was a strange aircraft in which different rules applied. It was the only option to fill a certain gap in the naval line for the USSR air TT, and they added things like guns and CMs that were only planned (basically they get special rules like the Ho-Ri and R2Y2 stuff). The F-20A was a fully fledged prototype, and although not the final one intended or fully finished, it is a different case in comparison to the Yak-141 in terms of how gaijin went about implementing and representing it ingame.

I would kill to see an interpretation of a fully finished 4th prototype as an event option someday.

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There are no rules, they made it up. It’s an arcade game.

I’m surprised no one reported the incorrect engine sound on F-20
There is F-404 in game (or, variant of it to be more precise. RM12 on Gripen), yet F-20 uses the sound from F-5s

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If it’s incorrect, maybe it’ll get fixed when they add hornets, as I bet they’d be willing to make a unique sound for it then.

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My bad… I misunderstood the post

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Alrighty folks, for those of you who said the F-20 as it is could potentially get AMRAAMs: REJOICE!
I was partly wrong! As it turns out, Tigershark 3 was planned to test AMRAAM integration following modifications made from 1986 through to 1987, where it would be fitted with the APG-67 ERR.



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Ohhhhhh. Nice! I wonder if they will ever consider bringing an event vehicle of a more advanced F-20 into game. With amraams of course. Name it the F-20C or something idk lol
Good find btw. Where did you find it?

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All of these types of pictures come from the book Air Force Legends #228: F-20 Tigershark, by Paul Metz.

Sadly, we can’t get a more advanced F-20, as none were actually built or finished. Proto 2/3 is the closest we ever got to a finished, production-level Tigershark (which is what we have in-game).

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When the current model gets the FM nerfed to realistic performance levels we might see something new.

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Does anyone have an information about F-20’s RWR?

Cause it feels weird that ingame F-5E has better RWR than F-20.

Been awhile since I looked at this, but I believe the F-5E uses a later RWR (used as an aggressor at a later date I presume). Incase I’m wrong I know just the man to clear this up, @Shin_Kazama
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Damn… With some joke, and a bit of jealousy as extra.
His nickname already gives me confidence about his opinion if he says something about F-20.
(Even if I didn’t consider any comments up there in this topic.)

He knows more about it than anyone else on this forum, he has that name for a reason after all :)

Apologies for such a late response, had a bit of a rough night at work and just got off.

Oooookay, so I don’t know if there’s actual concrete evidence of if the two full Tigershark prototypes (N3986B, proto 2 and N44671, proto 3) actually had the full RWR kit or not. All we really know are the proposed options Northrop had for the various production standards, as well as the fact that protos 2 and 3 did have a display in the cockpit.

Going off of Paul Metz’s book, the production standard set by prototypes 2 and 3 prior to 1986 (yeah, Tigershark history ends up getting way more complicated) indicates they would’ve had the ALR-46 RWR.

Prototype 4, 5, and the post-1986 F-20 production standard doesn’t list anything specific, so I imagine it would just carry over the same ALR-46 that the 1983/1984 production standard would.

Prototype 6 and the Air Defense production standard Tigersharks have listed either the ALR-46 or ALR-67. Interestingly though, I also saw the ALR-69 listed somewhere in the book in regards to either the post-1986 standard or Air Defense Tigershark.

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So in this case current RWR is accurate.

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Yes, as much as it kinda sucks lol.

One of these days I’m going to need to actually compile everything I know about the F-20, its development, etc into a google doc or something lol. Might be useful :D

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Since this topic saw a tad bit of attention, I’m gonna bring up a few things that really bugs me with Gaijin’s implementation of the F-20:

  1. inaccurate cockpit displays, even almost a year after implementation (and multiple bug reports that were outright acknowledged/passed to the devs)

  2. Missing liveries: The F-20 has schemes representing prototypes 1 and 2, but none representing prototype 3. On top of that, they missed probably the most prominent version of the two-tone grey scheme (with the different F-20 lettering on the tailfin, as well as a dark grey anti-glare strip on the nose).

  3. Missing TWS

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What is incorrect about the displays?

Where do I even begin?

Literally all the current pages (radar display, moving map display, and whatever that abomination of a digital instrument display is) are wildly inaccurate (Gaijin replaced the initial radar display with an even less accurate one, that being from the F-16s).

It’s missing horizontal navigation display, TWS display, and the stores management display.

Here’s what all of these are actually supposed to look like…

Spoiler





f20radartws.jpg.9dac98126102df83d2e0efa292659850
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