Regardless, F-16 pilot received instructions not once but twice and he did not comply or complied half-heartily
I wonder if that's truly a fair assessment.
He was issued the 80 degree turn at 1100:26 and at 1100:49 had turned through roughly 45 of those degrees. That's a cumulative rate of 2 degrees per second even with a minimal delay taken into account.
An instrument standard rate turn of 3 degrees per second at 250 KIAS (257 KTAS at 1500' on a slightly hotter than standard July day) would have required 33 degrees of bank. Not that the F-16 is not capable of plenty of bank, but if he was turning at 25-30 degrees of bank as one would expect in a practice IFR environment, turn rate would have been around 2-2.5 degrees per second resulting in a total amount of turn of between 45 and 56 degrees. Still not enough time to complete the 80 degree turn prior to merged plots. A 737 or C-17 under the same conditions could have ended up in the same place (without TCAS).
The geometry was not optimum for this maneuver, nor was the amount of time available to delay any assessment until a clearer picture of the geometry became evident. I think an insidious situation like this can generate the appearance of different faults to different people, where in fact under other circumstances everyone involved may have been doing what they do normally every day without incident.
There will probably be a certain amount of risk associated with pure VFR flying for a long time....if not longer.