Sandy Woodward has my respect, but I'm a bit wary of a submariner being cited as an authority of a fighter which he'd never had in his OOB as a battle force commander.
EDIT: that said, I just looked at the numbers again, quantity has a quality all its own, and lack of quantity is ... a problem. At some point, force multipliers don't, when you trim past the fat and cut muscle.
A more poignant question for our British friends is ... what AEW capability do the fighters have? That was one of Admiral Woodward's frustrating shortcomings when he ran the show ... what, nearly 30 years ago?
Man, time flies.