If it's the dog the anti's would have us believe, then surely some of those (must be low hundreds by now) who have flown it and have no service or company obligation would be dripping - particularly given the profile of the programme. The absence of that deluge suggests it may not be a dog.
Canning it now - as your "in a hole" analogy suggests - isn't really possible, given the absence of a viable plan B. Yes, the 15/16/18 are (just) still in production, but mostly not in US variants and do not meet the JORD (or at least some aspects of it). Yes, we know, neither do some variants of the F35, but in most cases they have a hope of doing so, whereas the legacy jets never will. For a look at what happens when you change course late in programme, check out the shenanigans the USN is having getting the Arleigh Burke Flight III into production, having curtailed DDG1000 at 3 units on cost grounds.
More importantly, if you can it now, what is the replacement? F/A XX? Some X47 derivative? What? How many years does the US spend re-analysing a requirement, running design competitions and then procurement competitions? What happens to the average age of the fleet while this soul-searching - and it would be of epic proportions - is conducted? All watched over by the lawyers who would make the A12 fallout look like a minor gardening dispute.
Like it or lump it, we're stuck with it, IMO.
As for the UK being the foundation for the global strategy, I'd have thought that basing a strategy on replacing less than 100 cabs (GR7 + SHAR), plus the odds and sods that IT/SP add to the STOVL total, is a fairly poor option against the legion of F16/F18 operators..........