Yawn - off we go again...
When will retired senior officers stop spouting off? It's no different to retired airships bemoaning a lack of FJ Sqns or Generals getting dewy-eyed at scrapped regiments and the number of tubes and tanks...let alone parachuting.
These "experts" were at the vanguard of a generation that always wanted the next bigger, better, faster, shinier toy but didn't (ever) have the money to pay for them and now seem astounded that they can't have the high-tech toys in the same number as the old toys they replace. If a Typhoon is 10 times better than an F3 then you need substantially less, the same with T45 v T42. You can't have it both ways. If these officers had decided on a proportion of the forces being "low tech, low cost, high numbers" for peacetime Ops and a bit of concurrency, then we'd still have flotillas of ships, stations full of aircraft and parade grounds full of tanks. They didn't. They acquiesced to a defence policy built around maintaining BAES and buying their products to protect Britain PLC. If they didn't like it they should have had the guts to resign whilst serving rather than carp at their successors from the £300 a day pension-boosting House of Lords.
Oh, that's become a rant....sorry...