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Jordan and the F-5

Jordan got its first F-5s as a gift from Iran. Later it sold its own Tigers to Singapore, Kenya and Brazil, where some still fly.

First F-5sFrom Iran, 1974–75
Last F-104sRetired July 1977
Sold onSingapore, Kenya, Brazil
StatusRetired
A camouflaged F-5E with its canopy open on a desert ramp below red sandstone cliffs
Original illustration A Tiger II on a desert ramp below red sandstone cliffs like those of Wadi Rum. The roundel is invented for the picture, not Jordan's. Painted for this site; it sets the scene and is not evidence of real markings.

A gift from the Shah

Jordan's first F-5s came second-hand from a neighbour. When Iran moved up to the Tiger II, it passed 38 of its old F-5As to Jordan in 1974 and 1975, and King Hussein once received 25 F-5s from the Shah as an outright gift.[1]

Tigers replace Starfighters

New F-5E Tiger IIs followed and took over from Jordan's F-104 Starfighters; the last F-104s left service on 1 July 1977.[2] For the next two decades the Tiger was one of the main fighters of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, flying alongside Mirage F1s.[3]

Selling Tigers to pay for Tigers

Money was always tight, and Jordan got creative. In 1994 it sold seven F-5Es to Singapore and spent the proceeds upgrading most of the rest with the AN/APG-67 radar, the set first built for the F-20 Tigershark.[3][4] One of those seven, Jordanian 933, flew on in Singapore as F-5S 817.[5]

Buying used and selling on became the Royal Jordanian Air Force's way of doing business. It was cheap and it worked, but it meant that for a whole generation Jordanian pilots flew jets that had started life with someone else.[3]

The Tiger exporter

When Jordan switched to second-hand F-16s, its Tigers became a small export business of their own. In 2008 Kenya bought 15: ten F-5Es, three upgraded F-5EMs and two F-5Fs, which still fly with the Kenya Air Force.[8] Brazil took eleven more, intending to upgrade them to its F-5EM standard. Sources split the eleven differently, as seven F-5Es and four F-5Fs or eight and three, and the upgrade proved harder than expected; not all of them made it.[6] One, Jordanian F-5E 654, never flew for Brazil and is now preserved in Curitiba under the Brazilian serial 4879.[7]

Jordan's own Tiger era has ended, but its Tigers have not. The jets it flew still turn up across three continents, which makes Jordan one of the most useful countries to know when you are tracing an F-5's past on the airframe records.

Last updated

Sources

  1. Flush with F-5 fighters in the 1970s, Trench Art
  2. Royal Jordanian Air Force report, CRMAP
  3. Royal Jordanian Air Force, MigFlug (2026)
  4. Royal Jordanian Air Force, Academic (Wikipedia archive)
  5. F-5S 817, ex-Jordan 933, AirHistory.net
  6. Brazilian Air Force receives last upgraded former Jordanian F-5FM, Scramble
  7. F-5E 654 preserved in Curitiba, AirHistory.net
  8. Royal Jordanian Air Force, Wikipedia archive (IPFS)
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