This article was also posted in /r/technology[1] . A lot of people there also underestimated stealth. Every fighter and SAM carries X-band radar, which F-35 and F-22 are optimized for. The most significant part of a dogfight happens way before the opponents even meet each other. It is the ability to engage and disengage from a fight at will.

F-16 cannot choose to engage or disengage a F-35 but the F-35 can dictate the battlefield, simply because it is very hard for the F-16 to even detect the F-35. The F-16 only shines when it is actively engaging the F-35 in visual dogfight, and that is only if the F-35 chooses to engage the F-16 this way. If the F-35 wants to disengage and seek a better battle conditions. it can fly into the blind spot of a F-16 and disappear from its sensors, both human and machine. Even before that, the F-35 can dictate what range it wants to engage, and will likely engage in BVR, then fly home, reload and come back again while the F-16 don't even know where the missiles came from, assuming it survived.

Then it can fly up, disappear into the clouds, whatever, and choose to reengage the F-16 anytime it wants to. Or simply wait for the F-16 to run out of fuel and have to return home. At that point, any 4th generation fighter is a sitting duck when you have to fly straight home. The F-35 have many scenarios and engagement chances against the F-16, simply because it has stealth, better range, sensor fusion and avionics. The F-16 only have one slight advantage, that itself cannot even set up and everyone in that thread is hawking over it.

So they are dissing the F-35 by focusing on one narrow scenario that the F-16 might shoot down a F-35, as though that just because the F-16 have better aerodynamics, F-35 cannot defend itself at all. F-16 meets F-35 in less 10 km range, F-16 auto-win. Really? The F-35 is not going to evade or maneuver or do anything to even the odds against the F-16. So the pilot saw an F-16 approaching, which it probably detected BVR for a long time anyway. "It's over, man! It's an F-16, I can't beat it in a dogfight, so let me sit here and fly straight and get it over with!"

Does the F-35 cannot turn better or have less energy? This contradicted recent testing which showed that F-35 is not inferior to F-16 in maneuvering[2] . I even find this article suspect in the first place.

There are a dozen things the F-35 do so much better than F-16, even in a air-air combat and we are dismissing the entire airframe based on one thing that it might not do just as well. It can operate in heavy AA regime, it can do very good CAS, it can defend itself against almost every 4th gen fighter, it can land on a carrier, do STOVL and will cost cheaper over its entire lifespan compared to splitting the program into three parts. Those guys just don't like this airplane.

Has anyone brought up that the F-35 in question was AF-02 (second oldest plane in the fleet), with old versions of the software that still had restricted AoA and roll rate limitations? And the F-35 didn't have active protection systems or LO coating?
Or that the F-35 pilot was an F-15E transition pilot with less than 100 hours in type against an F-16 instructor with over 1500 hours in type?