My post does have a slight biased slant on it due to me having been the man down in the weeds on more than one occasion! There are plus and minuses to both aircraft, but at the moment there are just too many brucie bonus points towards the "man with one fan"!
GR9 A very capable flown by some bloody amazing pilots! One man cockpit, and in the old days a useless TIALD pod was backed up with a good pair of binos. Nowadays an upgraded pod means they could do without the binos. The crews of JHF had "booty" pilots up there, who 99% had done a tour as troop commander in a rifle company, it really does help when telling the pilot about the ground scheme of manouvere and having a guy who actually understands intamately what your talking about!
Weapons, they had a nice mix of weapons on board. The SCL was changable with a bit of pushing, the best thing was them taking off those "slick" bombs. Now if you'd only had "ret" all the time!! The SoF could of gone kinetic and shocked the TB to death. The CRV7's fired on there own were good for warning/marking and as a whole pod they had mega area coverage, and leathal against pax.
GR4 An old airframe, thats just not manouverable enough (think mercedes benz...fast in a straight line but go around a corner fast and they fall over/apart). The 2 man crew, the pilot has good vis however the nav (sorry) has restricted arcs due to the air intakes (a navs words not mine). The aircrew unfortunatly need to be released prior to going OOA and get some Ex time with the grunts on PDT and get the ground scheme of manouver weighed off.
Weapons, DM Brimstone.... no anti armour threat that im aware off (but cost a shed load to develop so by god were gonna use it) think Hellfire uses (mouseholes into compound walls etc). The 27mm gun doesnt have enough rounds and a quick enough rate of fire to make it even into the same league as the A10's 30mm, and as for the the occasional stoppages....
The good weapon you have is the new EPW which gives you more choice on how you can attack the target (if the ROE permits).
Like i said on my first post, this is just my view!! But i am biased, having seen the handy work of some GR7/9 pilots...EPW2, 60m, extreame Danger Close!
At the end of the day, as long as whoevers up there keeps doing what there doing; you'll keep our boys safe.
WW.