I said they were fudged
To address some of the issues:
in High Guard there's nothing to say a small craft can't be armoured up to the maximum for the TL.
A 100t version is called a system defence boat, anything less than 100t could be termed a heavy gunboat.
The weapons carried are a bit of a fiddle, the rules say that you can mix weapons within a turret providing the ship has less than ten turrets, and up to three different weapons can be carried by a small craft. It's a bit of a fudge to select a "plasma" gun, sandcaster, and a missile launcher - if I were to drop one it would be the missile launcher
It does say in High Guard that a gunner is required for each additional type of weapon except sandcasters, but Supplement 9 ignores this rule in its write up of the heavy fighter (which is 50t and has an armour value of eight, maneuver/agility six, a model 7 computer, a laser, missile launcher, and sandcaster

).
I've also broken the small craft must have 1t of fuel rule - but it's all in a good cause.
A slight bending of the High Guard rules seems to give a pretty good gunship design.
The scout ship does have one advantage - it can fire its weapons at long range while the Trepida can not respond.
Let's also not forget that the Trepida is TL14 and the scout ship is TL9.
A TL14 scout ship would give the Trepida some problems - just by having a more advanced computer.