SCRAP IT! Jump to the next generation design, build more F-15SEs at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost, bolster them with F-22s built on contract by someone OTHER THAN Lockheed who are liars and couldn’t build a balsa model without cost overruns and that doesn’t asphyxiate the pilots.
A proper run of F-15SE and F-22 is nothing but a manufacturing process now. If you must have a air superiority fighter for the Navy, you don’t now and won’t with the F-35, fix the F-22 for the role. This has been conceived as workable. The F-15E has a confirmed record of being a very versatile, high performance truck that can still fight in and out from the target.
The Navy’s FA-18 program is going well and it seems to be a good airplane. Consider the builder... the old MD plant builds good airplanes. Boeing did themselves no favors over the tanker fraud but they still build good airplanes. Change the contracts, incentivize them and refuse delivery for anything that does not meet standards. The job will get done.
A good start would be about 10 new squadrons worth of each mark of the F-15SE and the F-22... 500 new airplanes that we desperately need. Our old ones are falling apart.
FWIW, Dick Cheney had the jigs and dies for the F-14 destroyed, but drawings remain for two followon versions of the basic F-14. Pick one and run with it. The NAV needs a better aircraft than the F/A-18 for fleet defense, and the F-14 variant "Tomcat II"/"Super Tomcat" (actually two designs to pick from) is that aircraft. Slather some radar-absorbent coatings on it and go for it.