I have been hanging around airplanes long enough to get a sense of what they do by watching them fly. The F-18 never has floated by boat let alone the E/F.
Now the F-14D I saw at the Reno Air Races in 91' with the GE Engines, did things I never saw a F-14 do before. And it pains me to say that being the Pratt and Whitney Engine zealot I am :-).
Just my 2 cents, I'd taken any and all the follow-on re-do's of the F-14, and If Cheney didn't kill the A-12, I'd have loved to see a version that wasn't all composite, maybe standard airframe with composite skins like the F-117a and see if it had the payload of the A-6 and Stealth.
Then the Navy would have had something....