British Aerospace P.125

P.125
Role	VSTOL multirole combat aircraft
National origin	United Kingdom
Manufacturer	British Aerospace
Status	Cancelled
Primary users	Royal Air Force (Intended); Royal Navy (Intended)
Number built	None

The British Aerospace P.125 was a British supersonic STOVL multirole combat aircraft being developed in the 1980s. The project was cancelled in the 1990s. The existence of the project was revealed by BAE Systems in 2006.^[1]

Development

The British Hawker P.1154 was one of several solutions submitted by European countries to the 1960 NATO NBMR-3 requirement for a supersonic strike fighter. 1960 also saw the first flight of the subsonic VSTOL Hawker P.1127. The P.1154 was cancelled in 1965, but studies continued into the possibility that the Harrier or Jaguar could be replaced by a supersonic STOVL aircraft.^[2]

In the 1980s the British MoD and the US DoD both conducted studies into lift jet solutions. The US studies eventually led to the F-35 Lightning II. In 1988 the Tornado-sized P.125 design was intended to meet the requirements for a supersonic stealthy STOVL interdictor. There were to be non-STOVL and STOVL variants of the P.125. Both had a single reheated (afterburning) turbofan with a vectorable rear nozzle. The STOVL variant would have maintained vertical flight using three jet lift nozzles. The pilot of the P.125 would have sat highly reclined supine position in a synthetic display cockpit with an array of cameras and would not have had direct sight of the outside world. The have not glass cockpit was enclosed but would increase stealth characteristics and would block out the potential Soviet threat of dazzling laser weapons. In the 1990s the UK government decided to join the JSF (now F-35) programme rather than continue the P.125.^[3]