Northrop Spent More Than $750,000,000 of Its Own Money on the F-20 Tigershark Without a Dollar of Pentagon Funding. It Sold 0 Aircraft and Wrote Off About $1,200,000,000.

Northrop’s F-20 Tigershark program, now known as a fighter that never entered production, illustrates how technical promise can still end in commercial failure. The company funded the project with more than $750 million of its own money, without a dollar of Pentagon research funding, and it ultimately sold zero aircraft. In performance figures the company highlighted, the Tigershark out-turned an F-16 in sustained turn—13.2 degrees per second versus 12.8—while projecting about 15 maintenance man-hours per flight hour compared with roughly 34 for a comparable F-16. Its AN/APG-67 radar could track 10 targets and engage beyond visual range earlier than an F-16. Northrop offered 396 aircraft in 1985 at $15 million each, canceled the program in late 1986, and absorbed losses estimated near $1.2 billion.