VTOL stands for Vertical Take off and Landing. While helicopters clearly fit a description of vertical take off and landing, the terms VTOL V/STOL STOVL and the like are reserved for aircraft who also fly conventionally using forward thrust to create the necessary lift to remain airbourne.
Militarily there is always a balancing act between speed, range and payload, and while specialist military helicopters exist such as the Apache for example, typically a helicopter’s speed, range and payload capacity is never going to match that of a fighter or a specially designed aircraft.
So military aircraft designers always had in the back of their minds to produce a fighter aircraft capable of delivering maximum speed, payload and/or weapons load, and range while maintaining the versatility of the helicopter’s take off and landing credentials.
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