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At an ANZUS meeting in 1958, the then Royal Australian Air Force ("RAAF") chief Air Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger made the following statement.

"...we have been desperately seeking a small, versatile airplane which can range over the whole area and which can operate from the thousand and one 6000-foot strips left over from the last war and which still are there and from which commercial airplanes are still operating...

...We believe we have found the airplane in a project which has been raised and was having a little difficulty here, the Northrop–156, which is a development of the T–38 supersonic trainer. It is a light airplane and can have a lot of sophistication in it, but we don’t want a lot of sophistication. We want it in a fairly cheap and uncomplicated form. It is the kind of thing we can build and build relatively cheaply, and it is the kind of airplane which could be used right throughout that area, where we ourselves are perhaps the most capable in the use of modern equipment…"

In the event that the F - 5 Freedom Fighter enters service with the RAAF, and is presumably constructed in Australia at the CAC factories. Would the acquisition of the F - 5 preclude the F - 111 contract for instance, and would the F - 5 be deployed to Vietnam? Another question is whether there would be any cooperation between the Australian and Canadian governments regarding their own variants?
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