As an aside, and for good technological reasons, it could be said we put all our eggs in one basket in the mid-late 70s, with the concurrent development of a number of front line radars creating a huge hump in funding. All 3 of the FAA's radars had to launch production early in 1982 (Sea Spray, Sea Searcher, Blue Fox), and the AWG-series and Blue Parrot were getting on a bit and in dire need of upgrade/replacement. Thereafter, there was a definite pecking order for funding, with Blue Fox benefiting, due to its relationship with Tornado, EFA and Blue Vixen.
Not just on the Airborne stuff, either. There was a whole host of new radar projects running across the whole of UK Defence during that period, Nimrod AEW3 and AI-24 at GEC, The IUKADGE mobile radars (T91 and T93), plus others. Its no wonder projects suffered from technical issues.