South Vietnam received over 150 F-5 fighters, some of which were F-5Es. After the fall of Saigon, many of these F-5s were evacuated to Thailand, however some still fell into Soviet and Vietnamese hands. These evacuated F-5s began a new life in Thailand, who operated about 70 of them in their own air force. All of these F-5s except the F-5Es were retired not long after. The F-5Es however were upgraded multiple times throughout their life and continue to see service with the Royal Thai Air Force to this day, and are not expected to retire until at least 2025-2030.

Introduced in Update "Alpha Strike", the F-5E FCU (Japan) is a squadron aircraft in the Japanese tech tree. It plays with all the major advantages of the other F-5Es in-game, being incredibly light and highly manoeuvrable resulting in some of the best energy retention on any jet aircraft at its battle rating range. The Thai F-5E however also solves one of the few downsides of the other F-5Es, the sub-par missiles. The F-5E FCU gets access to four all-aspect missiles instead of the usual two rear-aspect only missiles found on other F-5s in-game. In addition to this, it receives the usual great complement of ground ordnance that F-5s get, providing an incredible CAS option for Japan players in mixed battles. All in all, the F-5E FCU is a great all-rounder for almost every role it can find itself in for its battle rating, and is generally a forgiving vehicle to play and easy to learn even for less experienced pilots.