I was at Cannon when the varks were going away in the late nineties. They were great at what they did. They could carry a lot of weapons, and go a long way with them, but they were a pain in the butt to take care of. It really all came down to money...too much money to maintain a pretty small fleet of airplanes, especially the EF's. They were real gas hogs compared to the Navy/Marine EA-6B's that did the same mission. The EA's could carry HARM missiles as well, which the EF's couldn't do. They basically turned the whole mission over the the EA-6B's when they parked the EF-111s.