The U.S. Air Force’s chief of staff wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of aging F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated F-35 stealth fighters. But an affordable, lightweight fighter is exactly what the F-35 was first conceived to be.
I'd define it as a strike fighter/fighter-bomber. Standard armament carried Air to Air as our F/A18s couldn't keep up with them in speed or range, and most fighters were not really a match for it until SU30s started filtering in, aside a few F-16s that may or may not have been airworthy.
Ah. Most of the stateside F-111’s didn’t carry air to air.