After almost two months in this Tomcat, I don't think I can be killed unless I do something criminally stupid, like fight four Su-33s while not having my full attention on the situation. It's just a beast in the air, and despite me coming to ignore Jester most of the time, it's in those merges where he becomes the most helpful.
As for A2G, if this thing had an A2G radar, we'd be able to do absolutely everything. I now wish they had full explored expanding the D capabilities from the start, because it really can do almost everything, being limited only in low cloud and by not being able to carry HARMs or Harpoons.