Hawker Siddeley P.1154

The Hawker Siddeley P.1154 was a planned supersonic vertical and short take-off and landing fighter designed by Hawker Siddeley Aviation but never built. It grew out of the P.1150, a larger and faster development of the subsonic P.1127 that became the Kestrel, and it relied on plenum chamber burning, an afterburner-like boost to the engine nozzles used in hover. Work on the P.1150 began on 13 April 1961. When NATO issued NBMR-3 for a VTOL strike fighter, the design was enlarged and renamed P.1154 and judged the technical winner, but politics favoured the Dassault Mirage IIIV and neither entered production. Britain then tried to merge Royal Air Force and Royal Navy requirements, and the project was cancelled in 1965, leaving the RAF to continue with the P.1127 line that led to the Harrier.