In cold war doctirne interceptors were quite important, because of high flying, high speed bombers; but todays world the threat is just another fighter aircraft and HALE UAVs. F-35 might be good fighter but good fighter doesn’t always mean good interceptor, for example F-5 was good fighter but it has lack speed and max. altitude to inercept cold war threat. So the question is cold war paradigms about interceptors -fast, high flying, good acceleration- vaild or not for the F-35?

I think for good interceptors agility is not so important but speed, acceleration and max altitude is still required for future conflict. Target like Su-35 can climb as much as 59000 feet, in near future PAK-FA may be fly as much as 60000+ feet while keeping high speed; also there will be lots of problems to intercept UAVs that flies more then 65000 feet..

Its not a silly question, I was considering hypotatical war scenario; no policy, just technology and capabilities of the fighters.