Fighter planes cant pull 8Gs, 9Gs with full external load of weapons and external fuel tanks.
So no matter
how good the plane,
how heavy a plane ,
how many BVR missiles it can carry,
how much tech it has,
it has to shed all its external weapons as the first rule before taking evasive actions.
because most of the 9G airshow stunts can be pulled only in full monty, i.e, clean config with no external weapons(or at the most with a few WVR missiles).
So effectively the mission is over once you are found out and fired at.
100 million , 200 million or 26 million may be the cost of the plane. but it has to drop its LGBs excess fuel tanks, fire off its BVR missiles before taking high G evasive turns.
Because there is no guarantee that counter measures will work in tomorrow's EW environs. A skilled pilot and a costly plane can not be risked on the reliability of the electronic counter measures against BVR missiles alone.He must be ready to take those 9 g turns to save his plane and himself.
Then WVR battle follows.
So it does not matter whether the enemy is a light fighter or heavy fighter, number of fighters in air is non negotiable.
Thats why there is always a school of though that strongly believes that investing more and more in a single platform, making it costly and heavy with attendant higher detection possibilities against higher wavelength and QWIP equipped IR missile seekers is an unrealistic exercise grounded in fantasy realm of all BVR fights.
Thats why I said number of pylons, thousands of Kms of ranges, tons and tons of weapons carried alone may not always be the winner against well equipped smaller modern 4.5th gen lighter fighters which have fewer BVR missiles and lesser detection possibilities across the spectrum of detection techniques .
And lesser cost more in number for the same budget smaller fighters will be at four places at the same time, while four times costly heavy fighter can be only at one place for the same cost, which makes a world of difference in the WVR battle that happens after all the BVR missiles are fired.