British Aerospace P.1216

The British Aerospace P.1216 was a planned supersonic advanced short take-off and vertical landing aircraft of the 1980s, designed by the former Hawker team at Kingston upon Thames that created the Harrier family. It was to use a plenum chamber burning vectored thrust engine, the Rolls-Royce RB.422.48, with three swivelling nozzles instead of the four on the Harrier, and the design is best known for its twin boom layout in place of a single rear fuselage, which kept the tailplanes out of the hot exhaust. Lightweight lithium aluminium alloys, titanium and carbon fibre were proposed. It was tested extensively as models and shown as a full-scale mock-up to Margaret Thatcher in December 1982, and the project ran from 1980 to 1988.