Fighter is a kind of military aircraft, which is mainly designed for air combat with other aircraft, rather than bombers and attackers. Its main task is to attack ground targets. Fighters are marked by their speed, maneuverability and small size relative to other fighters.

Many fighters have auxiliary ground attack capabilities, and some are designed as dual-purpose bombers. Generally, an aircraft that does not meet the standard definition is called a fighter. This may be for political or national security reasons, for advertising purposes or for other reasons.

The main purpose of fighters is to establish air superiority in the battlefield. Since the first World War, gaining and maintaining air superiority has been regarded as the key to the victory of conventional war. The success or failure of the belligerent's efforts to gain air superiority depends on several factors, including the skill of the pilot, the tactical robustness of the doctrine of deploying fighters, and the number and performance of these fighters. Because of the importance of air superiority, since the early days of air war, the armed forces have been competing to develop technologically advanced fighters and deploy more fighters, while the deployment of a viable fighter fleet consumes a large part of the modern national defense budget. armed forces.

It was not until the first world war that the term "fighter" became the official English term for such aircraft. In the early 1920s, these aircraft were known as "scouts" in the RAF and RAF. From 1916 to the late 1940s, the U.S. military called its fighters "tracking" aircraft. In most languages, fighters are called Avion de chasse, jagdflugzeuge, AVI? N de Caza, etc.). Exceptions include Russian, in which the fighter is "I стретитель" (pronounced "istrebitel"), which means "insecticide", and Hebrew "Matose Krav" (literally "fighter").

As part of military terminology, various types of aircraft are usually assigned a letter to indicate their purpose, with a number to indicate a specific aircraft. The letters used to designate fighters vary from country to country - in English speaking countries, "F" is now used to represent fighters (such as Lockheed Martin's F-35 lightning II or "super jet" f.22), although the name used in the United States is "P" (such as Curtiss P-40 Warhawk). Use "I" (Polikarpov I-16) in Russia and "C" in France.

Although the term "fighter" refers to an aircraft designed to shoot down other aircraft, it is often used as a multi-purpose fighter bomber, strike fighter, and sometimes even a lighter, fighter sized tactical ground attack aircraft. This has always been the case, for example, in the first World War, the Sopwith camel and other "combat scouts" carried out a lot of ground attack work. In the Second World War, the U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force often preferred fighters rather than dedicated light bombers or submersible bombers, while fighters such as the P-47 thunderbolt and hawker hurricane were no longer competitive due to the degradation of air combat fighters to ground attack. Several aircraft, such as the F-111 and F-117, although they do not have combat capability due to political or other reasons, have acquired the name of the fighter. The f-111b variant was originally intended to serve as a fighter in the US Navy, but has been cancelled. This fuzziness is used by fighters since their inception. They "attack" or "strike" ground targets by throwing or dropping small bombs and ammunition at small targets. Multi purpose fighter bombers like the McDonnell Douglas f / A-18 hornet are cheaper than having a range of specialized aircraft types.