The foward swept wing of the P.1214 ultimately proved impractical and the design was refined even further with a conventional swept-wing with wingtip missile stations. The booms held not only the tail assembly, but also the main landing gear, some fuel tanks, weapons pylons, and in some design versions, the aircraft's cannon (the RAF favoring a 27mm Mauser cannon in the front section of each boom/wing pod).

In Tony Buttler's impressive book British Secret Projects: Jet Fighters Since 1950, he devotes an entire chapter to the VSTOL fighter design work of BAe Kingston. In reference to the P.1216 and its predecessor designs, he notes that in an unbroken line of engineering and design work in vertical-take off and landing fighters that go back to the P.1127 of 1957 to the P.1216 of the 1980s, BAe Kingston found no other more practical and efficient engine concept than thrust vectoring and the P.1216 was in a sense, the ultimate expression this work that stretched nearly 30 years. The addition of PCB to the P.1216 gave it supersonic peformance (keeping in mind the X-35B was the first practical supersonic VSTOL that is to be soon as the F-35B JSF for the Royal Navy and USMC) and a capability on par with current fighter designs of the day. With PCB, the P.1216 was not only supersonic, but it didn't need an afterburner as it's a very thermodynamically efficient system. In flight, the PCB lit is only 2/3 the fuel cost of a conventional afterburner and in vertical flight mode the additional thrust boost is in the region of 35-40 percent.

With the PCB arrangement and three-poster Pegasus engine, the unique forked tail layout of the P.1216 makes much more sense. With no aft fuselage to worry about, the aft nozzles of the Pegasus can be consolidated in a much more efficient and powerful single nozzle that still is fully vectorable. The P.1216 occupied a good deal of design work at BAe Kingston in the first half of the 1980s, but Britain and the RAF's fighter future would lay in the Eurofighter Typhoon (a decision still considered controversial in aviation circles)- sadly, an aircraft that would appear to possess none of the P.1216's operational flexibility that the Harrier family has consistently proven since entering service over 30 years ago.