That's just the nature of battle, there is no magic bullet weapon. Everything has some weakness. That's why there are so many variations working together. Tanks being support by infantry, infantry being supported by air, and so on. Light vehicles, heavy vehicles. Every aspect is covered. They are all made for different reasons and nothing is left to chance.
It was also a very unlikely hypothetical situation. A squadron wouldn't have to "drop everything and run in". They would be assigned as over-watch or what used to be known as top cover. Which is done in every section of the armed forces. From planes to infantry.

The F-35 is faster, and that is what matters in a beyond visual range combat. As soon as a missile is launched from up to 100KMs away, you will be "running away" because you don't want to take the chance that your ECM and Chaff might have not been effective. You will use every tool available to keep you alive, and one of the best ways is to drag out the enemy missile long enough for it to run out of energy before it can reach you. Since a snaking path is longer than a straight line, the enemy missile will have to fly further.

There really aren't any compromises except for the acceleration and maneuverability which I mentioned in my response to Newt is not really relevant. The other reason is that the F-16 is already at the physical limits of acceleration and maneuverability. Any more and the pilot would die. So the key is senors, weapons and stealth. Unless of course we start using fighter drones as instead of pilots. Then you could probably get away with some additional performance. But otherwise human piloted plane performance was already maxed in the 70s.

Thank ya, squire!

In reply to this comment by NordlichReiter:
*promote