In current military parlance, a strike fighter is a

multirole combat aircraft A multirole combat aircraft (MRCA) is a combat aircraft intended to perform different roles in combat. These roles can include air to air combat, air support, aerial bombing, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and suppression of air defens ...

designed to operate both as an attack aircraft and as an

air superiority fighter An air superiority fighter (or air-superiority fighter) is a fighter aircraft designed to seize control of enemy airspace by establishing tactical dominance ( air superiority) over the opposing air force. Air-superiority fighters are primarily ...

. 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 The Boeing F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornet are twin-engine, carrier-capable, multirole fighter aircraft variants based on the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. The F/A-18E single-seat and F/A-18F tandem-seat variants are larger and more adv ...

, and

Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is an American family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole combat aircraft that is intended to perform both air superiority and strike missions. It is also able to provide ele ...

History

Beginning in the 1940s, the term "strike fighter" was occasionally used in navies to refer to

fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...

capable of performing air-to-surface strikes, such as the

Westland Wyvern The Westland Wyvern was a British single-seat carrier-based multi-role strike aircraft built by Westland Aircraft that served in the 1950s, seeing active service in the 1956 Suez Crisis. Production Wyverns were powered by a turboprop engine dri ...

Blackburn Firebrand The Blackburn Firebrand was a British single-engine strike fighter for the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy designed during World War II by Blackburn Aircraft. Originally intended to serve as a pure fighter, its unimpressive performance and ...

and Blackburn Firecrest. The term "light weight tactical strike fighter (LWTSF)" was used to describe the aircraft to meet the December 1953 NATO specification

NBMR-1 NATO Basic Military Requirement 1 (NBMR-1) was a document produced by a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) committee in the 1950s detailing the specification of future combat aircraft designs. The requirement was for a "light weight tactic ...

. Amongst the designs submitted to the competition were the

Aerfer Sagittario 2 The Aerfer Sagittario 2 (Italian for '' sagittarius'') was a prototype all-metal single-seat lightweight fighter aircraft built in Italy by Aerfer, intended to serve as an interceptor or light tactical support aircraft. First flown in 1956, it b ...

, Breguet Br.1001 Taon,

Dassault Étendard VI The Dassault Étendard VI was a French prototype fighter aircraft initially developed as part of the NATO NBMR-1 competition to find a standard fighter to serve amongst member air forces. Dassault took advantage of the fact that the French Air F ...

Fiat G.91 The Fiat G.91 is an Italian jet fighter aircraft designed and built by Fiat Aviazione, which later merged into Aeritalia. The G.91 has its origins in the NATO-organised NBMR-1 competition in 1953, which sought a light fighter-bomber (offici ...

and

Sud-Est Baroudeur The SNCASE S.E.5000 Baroudeur was a French single-engined lightweight fighter designed by SNCASE (''Sud-Est'') for the NATO NBMR-1 "Light Weight Strike Fighter" competition. An unusual design without a conventional landing gear, it used a wheele ...

The term entered normal use in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

"Inside story of the troubled F/A-18."
''Popular Science,'' Volume 223, Issue 4, October 1983. . Retrieved: 23 December 2011. Quote: ... can fly either as a fighter or an attack plane ..In Navy parlance, it is a strike fighter. by the end of the 1970s, becoming the official description of the new

McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather, twin-engine, supersonic, carrier-capable, multirole combat aircraft, designed as both a fighter and attack aircraft (hence the F/A designation). Designed by McDonnell Douglas (now p ...

. In 1983, the U.S. Navy even renamed each existing Fighter Attack Squadron to Strike Fighter Squadron to emphasizePolmar 1997, p. 343. the air-to-surface mission (as the "Fighter Attack" designation was confused with the "Fighter" designation, which flew pure air-to-air missions). 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".

Joint Strike Fighter

In 1995, the U.S. military's Joint Advanced Strike Technology program changed its name to the

Joint Strike Fighter Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a development and acquisition program intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft for the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands ...

program."Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)."
''globalsecurity.org.'' Retrieved: 2 February 2011. The project consequently resulted in the development of the

F-35 Lightning II The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is an American family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole combat aircraft that is intended to perform both air superiority and strike missions. It is also able to provide elect ...

family of fifth generation multirole fighters to perform

ground attack In military tactics, close air support (CAS) is defined as air action such as air strikes by fixed or rotary-winged aircraft against hostile targets near friendly forces and require detailed integration of each air mission with fire and movement ...

reconnaissance In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...

, and

air defense Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...

missions with stealth capability.

Modern strike fighters

* McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle *

Sukhoi Su-30MKK The Sukhoi Su-30MKK (NATO reporting name: Flanker-G)MKK stands for Russian ''Mnogofunktzionniy Kommercheskiy Kitayski'' (Cyrillic: Многофунктзионний Коммерческий Китайски), "Multifunctional Commercial for C ...

Sukhoi Su-34 The Sukhoi Su-34 (russian: Сухой Су-34; NATO reporting name: Fullback) is a Soviet-origin Russian twin-engine, twin-seat, all-weather supersonic medium-range fighter-bomber/strike aircraft. It first flew in 1990, intended for the Sov ...

Shenyang J-16 The Shenyang J-16 (Chinese: 歼-16) is a Chinese advanced fourth-generation, tandem-seat, twinjet, multirole strike fighterBronk, page 38 developed from the Shenyang J-11 (itself derived from the Sukhoi Su-27) and built by Shenyang Aircraft ...

References

Citations

Bibliography