Originally Posted by
Harley Quinn
I seem to remember reading in Air International around the time the GR5 was being introduced that it had been found that the gun pods made a big difference to the hover performance
Not so much "discovered around GR5 time" as "a subject that was studied extensively by Hawker right from the early 1127/kestral days and was explored in extreme detail in hundreds of hours of tests in their blowinmg wind-tunnel programme". The subject was well understood by the time the GR1 was developed, but it was taken further in the HarrierII programme by the addition of the LIDs door.
I believe the UK Harriers had gunpods minus the gun.
UK Harrier
II aircraft (GR5/7/7a/9/9a and T10/12) never had a cleared gun installation due mostly to difficulties with link-strikes, but solving it was never a high funding priority so it festered. In the GR9 development wish-list the guns were formally deleted as a requirement, so the associated wiring was removed as part of the GR9 Capability A modification, which finally settled the matter. In fact at the time of the SDSR we were exploring the possibility of using the cannon pods as space for further avionic upgrades (we'd essentially used every other nook and cranny on the aeroplane, but the RAF/RN wanted more toys!).
The UK Harrier
I aircraft (GR1/1a/3/3a etc and the SHAR family) always had cleared guns IIRC.
PDR