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Why?? For the same reason we retired the F-14s and A6-E’s, to make room for new procurement. Procurement officers don’t make rank and find post military jobs, and contractors don’t get fat new contracts when we keep planes to the end of their service life.

F-14s are still unequalled in the Navy. The Super Hornet is far less capable. It’s almost helpless against a Sukhoi. The F-35 is even worse.
The A6-E carried a tremendous bomb load, equal to almost a third of a B52. It could fly out 2800 miles with a good load. The Super Hornet struggles to go 400. And we built brand new A6-Es right up until the day they retired. Several others were like new after being rewinged. BUt the Navy wanted to get rid of them fast to make way for the planned A-12.
Took almost new ones and sunk them off Florida to make a diving reef.

The F-15 is undefeated, and we are dumping them for a tiny force of F-22s and a few more moonpig F-35s

"Why?? For the same reason we retired the F-14s and A6-E’s"

Don't get me started on the F-14, especially the F-14D. When fully tricked out with LANTIRN, the Navy finally got a true multi-role, all-weather fighter/bomber that could go full air-to-air for fleet defense and also drop precision munitions like the Intruder.

Back in the day I participated a military exercise with some F-14Ds. Their capability was unreal.

Then the powers that be dumped it.

What a tremendous waste.

The A-12 program was cancelled before the decision to retire the A-6E fleet was made. Heads rolled at NAVAIR up to the 2 star level over cost overruns. In fact, the A-12 would have been a maintenance nightmare. Every time a panel on the airframe was removed, the low visibility coating had to be restored.

The real driver behind the retirement decision was the A-6's tailhook box. The max number of arrested landings was 2500. There was no economical way to replace the tailhook box without replacing the entire empannage. In addition, the A-6 was 1960's technology regarding survivability. The aircraft needed self sealing wing fuel tanks, a Halon firefighting system, improved ECM and DECM equipment to name a few upgrades to make it combat worthy.

At the same time, the F/A-18 was coming on line and DOD and the Navy mistakenly thought it could replace both the A-6 and the F-14. It hasn't. Although a capable platform, the F/A-18 still hasn't the "legs" or the munitions carrying capability of either of the aircraft it replaced.

Now, we are faced with the F-35, a further degradation of an ability to defend the CVBGs.

We used to joke about how Grumman built aircraft..."you take a block of iron and cut away everything that isn't an A-6". Sad to se that legacy go away.