Don’t seem the issues as being the same.
LW will be of comparable performance and radar equipped carrying BVR weapons - the aim being to deploy them forward to vastly extend engagement range, and ideally tangle the enemy in a fur ball whilst the manned fighters keep out and engage using their own weapons.
If L16 had been available to the Hawk releasing them from the F3 apron strings, maybe it would have been more productive. But, as with Bader’s big wing, the logistics of actually getting everyone in the right place and right time were so difficult it never seemed to work well enough to produce any of the claimed gains.