kghjfg - There are a couple of issues (one of which being that every Pprune thread where he gets mentioned swiftly deteriorates...)
The important thing is to disentangle Cdr Ward the SHAR pilot from Cdr Ward the historian (I use that word in its loosest sense) of air power.
The evidence suggests that the former was a highly capable operator who led his squadron well and whose record during CORPORATE was outstanding.
The evidence also suggests that the latter went from having a bee in his bonnet about the RAF to becoming almost obsessed about the 'light blue' and seeking to do the service down at every possible opportunity. The problem is that many of his comments have subsequently been shown to be misjudged (e.g. regarding the rationale for Op BLACK BUCK - the ultimate irony being that the Chief of the Air Staff argued that the runway should be attacked by Sea Harriers, not the Vulcan...) or just plain wrong (pretty much most of his now-deleted article on the Gulf War on the egregious first incarnation of the Phoenix Think Tank website and a not insignificant chunk of his commentary on other matters - e.g. Nimrod ops during CORPORATE - it's difficult to square his comment regarding them patrolling only around ASI when you're sitting in the National Archives holding the report of the Nimrod crew who got rather close to the mainland in your hand...).
Sadly, his writings seem to have adopted an approach where inconvenient truths are ignored and complex issues simplified if this enables a critique to be made of the RAF. His piece on the PTT about GRANBY included a number of perceived slurs against men killed in action, which was probably the point at which most Ppruners began to take a highly jaundiced view of the man.
Nowadays, I believe that the RN considers him a vexatious correspondent; I know that senior RN officers sigh every time it appears he's made a submission to the select committee, and a brief search of Pprune will see that the man is often played rather than the ball. Given the size of the balls he publishes, a clean tackle can be made without having to have a pop at him, although some argue that there is a case that his personality can't be disassociated from his writings.
Personally, I reckon that history will ultimately remember him for what he did with the Sea Harrier with his writings being relegated to nothing more than a footnote (in time, military historians not yet born will mutter to their students that Cdr Ward did go on to write some odd things in his retirement, but then so did many other retired senior officers [Walter Walker, anyone...?] and then move swiftly on).