I have not met S.W, and I know he has rubbed a lot of Navy people up the wrong way; I was told of a 'phone conversation with a Navy Test Pilot which basically ended with " last seen languishing in a latin American jail "...
However I have found one navy test pilot since to be so absolutely full of himself, & arrogant way beyond rude that he was hated by all around - not very professional...
When the Indian Navy bought Sea Harriers, the Flight Test team that went out for trials reckoned the Indians could teach the R.N. a lot about operations, rather than organising cocktail parties. Note the low loss rate.
A neighbour is an ex-R.N. Admiral who happily gave up flying so as to get command of a ship, which says a lot.
I'd tend to think the Royal Navy is still a lot more concerned with B.S. Than doing things right ( though the maintenance of the Seajets was reckoned better than RAF ) - so I would take whatever Sharkey says, in a diluted form, as about right.
As for the F-16, the FRS1 ( note not using BVR ) was said to beat it & about anything else, though obviously that would require tactics, not the Sun 'newspaper'- described viffing.
I attended a talk by the late Navy Test Pilot Taylor Scott who happily chatted about waxing F-14's in an exercise, simply by using radar on standby & detecting the other guys by emissions.
Like Sandy Woodward's description of sneaking into a U.S. CBG, I think this relied on peace-time rules rather than what would happen in an all-out war.