According to George Spangenberg, Evaluation Division Director of NAVAIR, the push for the XFV-12 came from NAVMAT. Specifically from Rear Admiral Thomas Davies head of R&D at NAVMAT, who felt that the Navy's frigates and destroyers could not do the ASW mission, and small carriers with ASW helos could get the job done. Naturally, said carriers would need air defense if they were going to operate on their own, AEGIS being nearly a decade away, and in 1972, in an unprecendented move by NAVMAT, feelers were sent out to the aerospace industry for a VTOL long range senor aircraft and a high perfomance VTOL fighter. A wide variety of proposals from the industry came back, and NAVMAT had NAVAIR review them. The submissions were all over the place, ex C-130 variant, because the Sea Control Ship was so poorly defined. As you mentioned before a lot of squids were worried that a supplement such as the SCS would end up being shoehorned in as the main type of carriers due to budgetary concerns.
