I believe thar R Royce presented a number of aircraft builders with the Pegassus engine and asked them to build an aircraft around it.
Hawker was the one who came up with a workable design. Even so, the Harrier had a very steep learning curve for pilots learning to fly it.
That is certainly possible, and a very British way of doing things, putting the cart before the horse, as it were. It makes such poor business sense that it hardy seems that even the british would go about it that way.
When I first read about the Harrier quite a few years ago, I thought the controls were too complicated.
Like any jet fighter, the Harrier had a joy stick and a throttle, but it also had a lever to control the angle
of the thrust nozzles. The joy stick also controlled other little thrust nozzles that acted in concert with Aileron, elevator
and rudder during slow speed or hover when the conventional control surfaces were useless.
As it turned out, pilots adapted to the controls and the Harrier was a very successful aircraft.
A former co-worker and ex military flyer spent the better part of an afternoon enlightning me on his knowledge of the Harrier. According to him, the prototype had a series of toggle switches and complex controls that no one could master. It was tethered to the ground so it couldn't get too far so imminent disaster would be confined to a specific location. They put limited fuel in it so any post crash fires could be contained quickly. Once a certain test pilot was able to control the thing, they decided to untether it. He apparently lost control of it but quickly decided that it was an airplane and started to fly it likewise. Unlike a helicoper, it uses pure thrust and does not have the luxury of the translational lift provided by rotary wings; it actually has to get to flying speed before it acts like an airplane. The test pilot was able to accomplish this feat. However, once he got it flying like an airplane he realized he had about 30 seconds of fuel left, he apparrently made a successful landing. This is of course a third hand account, and the entire story took the better part of 3 hours, and that was 15 years ago, so my memory is a bit sketchy.