I would offer that you are seeing exactly that “quantity has a quality all of its own” in Ukraine right now? The multitude of SAMs, MANPADS and hand-held Anti-Tank weapons are having a huge effect on higher end Russian equipment - I see a Su-34 FULLBACK was taken down the other day, at least 3 Ka-50 HOKUMs and also quite a few T-90 tanks with reactive armour. It would appear that all of these higher quality types have been overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of weapons as they would likely survive against small numbers.
I think we are also seeing a return to the kind of losses that high-end war fighting brings rather than the small, limited and fairly one-sided skirmishes that TELIC and HERRICK represented. Whilst not quite total war, this isn’t far off at all and the West needs to get used to what that means again (why do I say that? Ukraine is not counter striking Russia in it’s own territory).
As for flying a Hunter? Yes, with a suitable set of improvements (DASS, datalink, upgraded weapons and supporting avionics), then the Hunter would make a pretty damn fine ground attack aircraft even today. The problem being after you’ve hung all those bits on it and done all of the various test flying and certification/qualification of the systems then it probably wouldn’t be that cheap anymore!