A good plan, PN. Let's look at timescales and when we really think Dave will be on line, with a reasonable capability (not an arbitrary IOC - we made that mistake with Eurofighter). F-18, as I have said before, may be the answer.
Super Bug could actually serve our needs very well. Of course, the issue is that we don't really know what our requirement is as SDSR didn't seem to address that. A cynic (not me, obviously) might be tempted to think that SDSR was more about 'where can we cut?' than 'what do we need?'
Let's guess at what we need and (apart from this potential/ficticious day 1, which the US may indeed want to do) see if Super Bug can do it. AND it would get the RN cats and traps for future growth.
While we're guessing, by the way, we might also want to consider why we would even consider the VTOL/VSOL/STOVL/etc option, given that it is obviously less capable - range/payload/etc, I've said it all before.
Answers on a postcard please...