That is, a budget plane the US wouldn't afraid to export.
It was initially a privately funded Northrop-Grumman project, too!
A much-improved version called F-20 Tiger Shark was floated in 1970s, by which time it had to compete with the F-16 - and it couldn't!
But it wasn't for sexy reasons like F-16 being that much more capable. No, USAF had gone balls-deep into the F-16 buy and everyone saw that it was the plane - about as capable if more expensive - that would have support for years to come.
