Actually, the Tomcat was specifically designed as an interceptor, though with manouvreability as an important requirement too. The raison d’etre of the Tomcat was to carry Phoenix missiles out to intercept hoardes of Tu-22M Backfire bombers. This is very much interception!

The definition of interceptor that is used by pretty much everyone is that an interceptor must have a good radar, good missiles, and ideally a good range. During the cold war, there were generally two types of interceptor; those designed to race up to over Mach 2, but with short ranges, as point interceptors; and those designed to fly long distances with missiles, generally at subsonic speeds most of the way. The ultimate example of this was of course the Douglas F-6D Missileer, which was very much subsonic! This was cancelled, and the F-111 was designed, again as a long range missile carrying interceptor. The Tomcat then took over when they realised the F-111B wasn’t going to be very carrier-friendly.

As Sferrin rightly points out, by that definition, only a handful of types would be considered interceptors! As for F-16s for CAS, this is actually a dangerous analogy, since the fighter mafia actually insisted that the F-16 not be given A2A as its initial tasking, hence in the early ’80s, most F-16s were toting cluster bombs and multiple Mk82s…. :diablo: