The F-111 has always drawn negative press because there were so many variants of the basic design. If any version failed to meet it’s design criteria, the press played on that. The whole F-111 program was made to look like a failure.
It was a good idea but difficult to develop one plane that could perform the various roles envisioned for the F-111. I think the F-111 (fighter) and the FB-111 (fighter/bomber) were good products. The other versions were scrapped on the drawing board or during development. But time took it toll, rolls changed, materials and computer technology improved, and the world changed.
I don’t think the author of this article did enough research to make the judgements he has made.
During Red Flag exercises on straight out air to air, the F-111 sucked. But crank up it’s advantage of TFR ( Terrain Following Radar ) and it got low, no plane in the world would even try and take it. TFR used to take up half of an aircraft’s “black boxes”. Now it’s only one small chip.