While in the beginning the role of attacker and fighter was pretty clearly defined in the payload the planes got by now the role of the fighter has been moved away from mostly fighting planes but also recieved playloads that would make bombers blush.
This is very obvious when you look at japan BR 5.
If a tank gives you trouble would you chose the attacker squad or the fighter squad?
Given the 2 times 250kg bombs loadout the fighter is more viable than any other plane japan has.
The fighter is no longer a fighter but also an attacker.
Planes like the P 38 or the FW190 even exist with a fighter plane and an attacker plane version so they might sometimes be confusing for new players as there isnt a great way to tell them apart why it is a fighter or an attacker now.
Given how now the jets with up to 2 500kg bombs will be in the fighter slot aswell, there is little reason to keep the slots seperate. As they got a better payload than the majority of the attackers ingame.
The fighter slot really has powercreept the attacker slot.
The roles for tanks arent separated into diffrent slots like TD and infantry support tank or light and heavy so there is no need for handholding really.
If players decide to bring 2 attacker then they will be suceptible to a fighter beeing spawned in kinda like how infantry support tanks really benefit from someone else in a long gun tank to protect them if a heavy tank is spawned.
So should the devs concider merging the slots?
If they do that, it would help f2p players actually beeing able to fly if they want to as their one attacker squad would no longer be blocked by a single player in a plane.
Feel free to disscus this topic as it might still be very controversial and nothing that you should just implemented on a whim without input from the community.