Strike fighter
In current military parlance, a strike fighter is a multirole combat aircraft designed to operate both as an attack aircraft and as an air superiority fighter. As a category, it is distinct from fighter-bombers. It is closely related to the concept of interdictor aircraft, but it puts more emphasis on aerial combat capabilities as a multirole combat aircraft. Examples of contemporary American strike fighters are the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle, Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.History
Beginning in the 1940s, the term "strike fighter" was occasionally used in navies to refer to fighter aircraft capable of performing air-to-surface strikes, such as the Westland Wyvern, Blackburn Firebrand and Blackburn Firecrest.
The term "light weight tactical strike fighter " was used to describe the aircraft to meet the December 1953 NATO specification NBMR-1. Amongst the designs submitted to the competition were the Aerfer Sagittario 2, Breguet Br.1001 Taon, Dassault Étendard VI, Fiat G.91 and Sud-Est Baroudeur.
The term entered normal use in the United States Navy by the end of the 1970s, becoming the official description of the new McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. In 1983, the U.S. Navy even renamed each existing Fighter Attack Squadron to Strike Fighter Squadron to emphasize the air-to-surface mission.
This name quickly spread to non-maritime use. When the F-15E Strike Eagle came into service, it was originally called a "dual role fighter", but it instead quickly became known as a "strike fighter".In 1995, the U.S. military's Joint Advanced Strike Technology program changed its name to the Joint Strike Fighter program. The project consequently resulted in the development of the F-35 Lightning II family of fifth generation multirole fighters to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions with stealth capability.Modern strike fighters
