The question is not how well the F-35 is against and old French Jet, but how well is stands up to a Mig 41 in combat.
For a long time now, airplanes have been a great deal less important than the missiles they fire.
Others in the thread have jumped on the Beyond Visual Range stuff. They are right. F-35 is not a great airplane. It’s a stealth weapons platform. If you could have a C-130 with missile pylons and the same radar cross-section (you can’t, but if you could) you would not need to spend on the F-35. The C-130 could sit out at 20 miles and shoot missiles.
In this instance, I suspect they got in close and used missiles with infrared seekers in their simulation. Perfectly legit simulation.
As has always been true with our stealth aircraft, they don’t shoot backwards. So an F-35 has to bore in at some swarm of enemy vehicles, manned or otherwise, to close range, maintain radar lock for the missile’s seeker, and start shooting. At some point one of those enemy vehicles will get into heat-seeker range and get a kill.