Battlefield role
Contests enemy aircraft, escorts strike missions, and threatens ground targets that lack air cover.
The fighter jet makes the whole map reachable. From the Modern Age on, every part of your empire is minutes from a possible strike, and air superiority — boring, patient air superiority — becomes the invisible resource that permits everything else.
Missiles countering aircraft is the era’s defining check: flying into defended airspace converts your air force into wreckage. Great air players fight where the coverage isn’t, and make the enemy defend everywhere.