Talk:Northrop F-5

Freedom fighter and Tiger II

Does anyone else think the f5a freedom fighter and f5e Tiger II should have their own separate pages as they are fundamentally different aircraft ~2025-32103-16 (talk) 15:58, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

They aren't really fundamentally different - the changes are not major.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:08, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

As Nigel said, the Freedom Fighter and Tiger II are not fundamentally different. Unlike the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet (which share almost nothing in common other than general layout and name), the Freedom Fighter and Tiger II still share a common airframe and differ primarily in avionics. The F-16A Block 15 and F-16C Block 52 are probably more different than the F-5A and F-5E. - ZLEA ^TǀC 03:28, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Iran apparently used F-5 during the 2026 Iran war

translated from faz.net:

One would expect to see an F-5 fighter jet in a museum or at an air show rather than in combat against the world’s most powerful military. Yet in early March, at least one Iranian pilot managed to bomb the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait using such a twin-engine American aircraft—and fly back to Iran unscathed. Apparently, the aircraft flew so slowly and low that it was not detected by air defenses.

Not Iran, but the U.S. network NBC was the first to report on the attack in April. According to U.S. government sources, it was the first time in years that an enemy fixed-wing aircraft had struck a U.S. military base. The Iranian military commented in detail on the incident for the first time on Monday [25 May 26] on the Defapress platform. According to the report, two F-5s were said to have flown at a low altitude of just 150 meters. They are said to have dropped a total of eight bombs.

Is that worth mentioning in the Wikipedia article?

~2026-17771-92 (talk) 08:43, 26 May 2026 (UTC)