(SLL is no doubt not intending to be derogatory; nor is harrier - whose sharing of relevant finds would be most welcome, please.)
OT was "what fighters", and our discussion has VS swingers popping up like bad pennies. The most recent Barnes Wallis biog flatly places on Geo.Edwards "blame" for leaving his pivots out in the cold. During 1964, BAC moved VG scheming from Weybridge to Preston (having earlier dismantled VS' S.Marston team). You have all missed the context of 1964: BAC was in dire business poo.
Thorneycroft had accepted CAS Elworthy's advice to abandon TSR.2 and take fixed-price F-111, just slipping a few onto McNamara's planned >3,000 (!). VC10 had evidently not done what Flight said at its first flight, 29 June,62: it would hold 707 sales (then 550) to just 200 more: “demand has been filled.” In fact 10 went to 3 open Users (+BOAC/RAF). When 707 No.1,010 flew in ’94 only RAF still operated VC10. How many Concordes would actually happen? DC-9 was thrashing 1-11: when would a Baby-Boeing emerge?
CVA-01 was funded 7/63: its task would be Indian Ocean, and on 27/2/64 Minister Throneycroft had defined its Air Group as Buccaneer S.2/WE.177A(N), plus F-4K. Done; next: what to do instead of TSR.2 to replace RAFG Canberra B(I)6/8+free Mk.7. He settled on P.1154(RAF)/WE.177A, and /WE.177B, a new and Bigger Bang.
Wilson got in 16/10/64 and judged his position to be exactly as Cameron would, 5/2010: unaffordable. I.a, AWRE/ROF were overloaded. By 19/2/65 Healey had settled on: a Gutersloh spoiling Wing of dispersed P.1127(RAF)/WE.177A to interdict Red armour (which had a range of 20km: don't try to kill each tank, kill POL). Modest payload-range, no prob: they would be popping up from a copse. Plus lots of F-4M (intake/rear fuselage keeping Preston alive) plus B43 (releasing ROFs to attend to Polaris).
Now, from mid-1963 in the context of bouncing back from CDG's 16/1/63 non to UK-in-EEC, UK and France had been flirting variously. Moore/II has JFK reminding Macmillan that UK had few nuclear secrets which it could pass on. The choppers package and Jaguar would emerge from these contacts. Dassault was doing G-Mirages. The obvious UK partner in any such flirting was not ex-VS, not ex-V-A, not ex-EE. Buccaneer S.2 Systems, sounder finances, and VG design experience made HSAL the more credible team. A.W.59 had been bid in 1952; assets bought in ’59 included DH.127 VG/VSTOL scheme, and Folland, in ’60 hiring Weybridge’s VG designer for Fo.147. To late-64 VG HS.1170B/1171 were pursued; BAC VG effort had been in model trials of Wallis’ Wild Geese/Swallow arrows, a superseded shape, now further impugned by the shift North.
But BAC's man Knight was getting towards the end of a >2 years' investment in the sandpit. Magic Carpet would be signed 21/12/65, planning £1.5Bn, to be paid in liquid gold. That is why BAC, not HSAL, was to be sustained (no tender process) on AFVG. To qualify for design leadership Healey had to commit to buy at least as many as CDG asserted he wanted for AdlA and Aeronavale. So on-credit F-4M/free B43 would be rolled over for "AFVG(RAF)"/plus WE.177B (built when, how?); to puff up UK numbers, F-4K would be rolled off and an AFVG(RN) invented.
As soon as CDS Mountbatten retired CVA-01 and "AFVG/RN" died, 2/66. UK obfuscated about its total buy of "AFVG/RAF"; Dassault resolved that for us, 29/6/67, and again came to UK's rescue in Spring,1968. Healey and France had gatecrashed F-104G Users' replacement discussions as soon as W.Germany abandoned V/STOL AVS. France said, anyMirage will do, so were ejected; Healey said "here's AFVG know-how thrown into the common pot at no charge". W.Germany said "ah, but we've already done a licence deal with Grumman for F-111B pivot/wing centrebox". "Let's do that", said Healey and MRCA was conceived; UK would need to find a way of matching Luftwaffe+Bundesmarine's enormous asserted buy, so UK could be "equal", so a downstream fighter variant would replace Lightning. HSAL never got a whiff of any of it.