IMHO, it will not be filled until another fighter has its legs (range) and until that fighter can carry a new missile to make up for the loss of the AIM-54, thePhoenix. We are giving up hundreds of miles in carrier air defense without the combination of these two stalwarts, or something to replace them. The Super Hornet is good, and the AMRAAM is good...but togther they simply do not have the range of the Tomcat and Phoenix and that buffer is critical in fleet air defense.
The idea is to keep the enemy attack aircraft and their long range air to surface missiles out of any envelope where they get close enough to launch those missiles. They need to be splashed, if at all possible, beofre they get within launch range. The Tomcat/Phoneix combination helped ensure that better, IMHO, that todays Super Hornet/AMRAAM combo.
Just my opinion.
It is also Frank Gaffney's opinion, and I believe was the late Admiral Thomas Moorer's...an architect of much of our overall Fleet strategies and structure.
Dick Cheney was the one who, in 1991 as then Secretary of Defense, ordered the destruction of the tooling that was kept to make F-14's. [ Particularly the titanium wing box...which was more art than science to arrive at. ] He also ordered the destruction of the SR-71 tooling, I believe. His theory on both planes was...that we won't need them again...and no one else in the world will ever be able to make anything like them...so we can afford to do without.
I'm afraid his view has been pre-eminent as between who persuades GWB as between him and Rumsfeld.