Paramount Aerospace Industries has unveiled a dedicated counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) configuration for its Mwari multi-mission aircraft, releasing details of the new capability on 16 July 2026. The development marks the latest expansion of a platform that has been accumulating mission variants since its commercial launch at the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition in 2022, and it arrives at a moment when the proliferation of one-way attack drones has moved from a fringe operational concern to one of the most pressing capability gaps facing defence forces and infrastructure operators across Africa and the wider world.
The Mwari Counter-UAS configuration integrates an advanced electro-optical targeting system with a configurable sensor architecture and a range of kinetic effector options onto the existing airframe, allowing the aircraft to detect, identify, track, and engage low-altitude unmanned aerial threats from a single, rapidly deployable platform. The human crew remains in the engagement loop throughout, a design choice that reflects both the legal and operational realities of counter-drone operations in theatres where target misidentification carries serious consequences.
“The proliferation of low-cost one-way attack drones has created an acute vulnerability for defence forces and infrastructure operators worldwide,” said Lee Connolly, Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Aerospace Industries. “These systems are placing enormous pressure on conventional air defence networks while creating a cost imbalance for the defender. For many nations, the detection problem can be as challenging as the defeat problem. Mwari’s modular architecture allows us to configure the aircraft around the customer’s existing air defence environment and the specific threat they face.”
The Mwari: A Platform Built for Modularity
Understanding the counter-UAS configuration requires understanding what makes the Mwari architecturally different from most light attack and surveillance aircraft. The aircraft, which Military Africa has tracked since its first emergence as a commercially feasible platform, originated as the Advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (AHRLAC), a joint venture between Paramount Group and South African aerospace firm Aerosud. It first flew on 26 July 2014 and has since been commercially designated the Mwari, a Zulu and Ndebele word broadly meaning “the one who is above.”
The airframe itself is a distinctive twin-boom, single-engine design — a single Pratt & Whitney PT6A-66B turboprop driving a rear-mounted pusher propeller — with a cruise speed of roughly 500 km/h, a service ceiling above 30,000 feet, and the ability to operate from rough or unprepared airstrips of around 500 metres. It first flew on 26 July 2014, the product of a joint venture between Paramount Group and South African firm Aerosud, and survived a rocky patch in 2019 when a dispute between the two partners put the programme into business rescue before Paramount took full ownership. It can operate from unprepared and rough-terrain airstrips of 500 metres or shorter, a capability engineered from the outset to suit the austere environments in which most of its target customers operate. The airframe carries five hardpoints for external stores.
The feature that makes all of this relevant to the counter-UAS announcement is the Interchangeable Mission Systems Bay (IMSB). Located in the belly of the aircraft, the IMSB provides near-endless sensor and payload options that can be integrated and swapped out in less than two hours. The open architecture and flexible systems interface allows new sensor pods, weapons, avionics packages, and mission equipment to be integrated rapidly, at low cost, and without permanent modification to the airframe. The aircraft also carries dedicated mission system stations at the crew positions, allowing a mission operator to manage sensor data and engagement decisions independently of the pilot. This two-crew architecture is central to the counter-UAS configuration: one crew member manages the flight, the other focuses on target detection, classification, and the engagement decision.
The 2022 MALE Drone Hunter Baseline
The July 2026 announcement is not Paramount’s first move in the counter-UAS domain. In 2022, coinciding with the Mwari’s commercial launch and first confirmed customer deliveries at the AAD 2022 exhibition, Paramount revealed that the platform had been equipped with advanced anti-drone technologies enabling its deployment as a hunter and killer of Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones. That announcement addressed a threat category that, at the time, presented a different challenge from the one the 2026 configuration targets.
MALE drones, such as the Bayraktar TB2 and Wing Loong II series, operate at altitudes between 20,000 and 30,000 feet. At those heights, engaging them requires either expensive ground-based air defence missile systems or the intervention of combat aircraft. The Mwari’s ability to reach and operate at those altitudes, combined with its advanced sensor architecture and precision weapon options, positioned it as a cost-effective alternative to either of those approaches. “Historically, prohibitive costs have restricted anti-drone systems targeting MALE drone threats,” said Steve Griessel, then Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Group, when the capability was first announced. “Amidst this paradigm is where the Mwari perfectly steps in, the next and best-in-class precision technology, able to operate at a fraction of the cost of alternative anti-drone solutions. No other singular aircraft has such an intuitive multi-mission application or can reach similar altitudes while hosting what is the industry’s gold standard in situational awareness technology.”
Griessel described the IMSB as enabling system changes on the fly, with updates, additions, and integrations in real time possible without taking the aircraft out of operational service. “We look forward to leveraging the innovative Mwari’s robust applications as the pre-eminent anti-drone defence solution and to its exciting next steps in adoption by our global partners,” he said at the time.
The 2026 Counter-UAS configuration builds on that baseline but targets a different and, for most African customers, more immediately pressing threat category: the low-altitude, slow-speed one-way attack drone.
Addressing the Low-Altitude Threat
The one-way attack drone has emerged as the defining tactical weapon of the mid-2020s conflict environment. First-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones, commercial quadcopters modified to carry explosives, and purpose-built loitering munitions are being used by state proxies and non-state armed groups across Africa at a rate that has accelerated dramatically. Military Africa’s June 2026 analysis on Africa’s counter-UAS imperative documented a pattern of drone incidents by non-state actors in Africa that has been doubling or tripling year on year, with groups that used surveillance drones in 2020 now deploying swarms of kamikaze FPV drones. In January 2026, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) used reconnaissance drones to guide a multi-wave assault on the 153 Battalion Forward Operating Base in Marte, Borno State, Nigeria, before extending the attack to bases in Dikwa and Rann, killing dozens and injuring many more.
One-way attack drones present a specific detection challenge that separates them from MALE platforms. They fly low, often below the coverage of ground-based radars optimised for conventional aircraft and ballistic missile threats. They are slow, which confuses radar systems tuned for faster-moving targets. They are small, reducing their radar cross-section to levels that challenge many detection systems. And they are cheap, meaning that a defender who defeats one with a ground-launched missile worth tens of thousands of dollars has already lost the economic exchange. As we reported on Africa’s widening counter-UAV deficit, many African militaries have been slow to field functional C-UAS solutions, and those that have acted tend to rely on systems that address only part of the problem, jamming the radio link but not the drone, or intercepting single aircraft but struggling with simultaneous multi-drone attacks.
The additional challenge for most African customers is infrastructure. Establishing a comprehensive ground-based sensor network to detect low-altitude threats requires capital investment, time, planning, and sustained logistics support. For smaller defence forces, or for operators responsible for protecting specific high-value assets such as offshore energy platforms, port facilities, or military forward operating bases, that ground-based sensor network may simply not exist. The Mwari Counter-UAS configuration addresses exactly that gap.
How the Configuration Works
The Mwari Counter-UAS configuration operates in two broad employment modes, and the choice between them depends on what the customer already has in place.
Where an established ground-based detection network, command and control infrastructure, or wider surveillance architecture already exists, the Mwari functions as a networked airborne interceptor. The aircraft receives threat information and target vectors from the wider air defence system, flies to the intercept point, confirms the target identification through its onboard electro-optical and infrared sensors, and executes the engagement. In this role, the Mwari adds an airborne intercept capability that a ground-based system cannot provide by itself, while relying on the existing network for the detection and cueing task.
For customers who lack that ground infrastructure, the Mwari can be configured with additional airborne sensor capabilities that provide a degree of autonomous detection and tracking. In this standalone mode, the aircraft conducts barrier patrols ahead of defended areas, using its own airborne sensors to search for and detect slow-moving low-altitude targets. The sensors feed data to the mission operator, who manages positive target identification before an engagement decision is made. This approach allows the aircraft to function as a self-contained airborne C-UAS capability without requiring the customer to build a ground sensor network first.
The electro-optical targeting system at the core of both modes provides day and night surveillance, target identification, and tracking. The sensor architecture is designed to handle the specific radar and optical signature characteristics of low-altitude commercial and semi-commercial drone platforms: small, slow, and often operating in cluttered airspace near the terrain. The mission operator’s station presents fused sensor data in a format that supports the identification decision, retaining the human judgment call throughout. Paramount has not disclosed which specific sensor systems are integrated into the standard configuration, noting that the open architecture allows additional sensors to be added according to the customer’s existing equipment and operational requirements.
Configurable Effectors for Close and Stand-Off Engagement
The weapon architecture reflects the same modular logic as the rest of the platform. The Mwari Counter-UAS configuration supports two broad categories of effector: gun systems for close-range engagements, and guided or precision rocket systems for engagements at greater stand-off distances.
Gun pods can be carried on the aircraft’s external hardpoints for the close-range intercept role, giving the crew a high-rate-of-fire option against drones that have penetrated close to the defended area. Precision rocket systems extend the engagement envelope to greater stand-off distances, allowing the crew to engage threats before they reach the perimeter of the defended asset. Paramount has noted that the IMSB and dedicated mission system stations allow surveillance and detection equipment to be carried simultaneously with external weapon loads, so the weapon configuration does not compromise the sensor picture and vice versa.
The open mission architecture supports the integration of weapon systems from multiple international suppliers, which means customers can align the Mwari’s counter-UAS effector load with existing weapon inventories, national procurement policies, and preferred industrial partners. This flexibility matters in markets where ammunition standardisation, maintenance support, and supply chain continuity are as important as the weapon’s performance specification.
The configuration has been structured as a scalable and evolving capability rather than a fixed solution. As counter-UAS technologies develop and as the threat itself changes, the IMSB and configurable mission stations provide a pathway for sensor and effector upgrades without replacing the airframe. That is, broadly, the same architectural philosophy that has allowed the Mwari to accumulate capabilities from ISR through precision strike to MALE drone hunting and now to low-altitude C-UAS over the course of its operational life.
A Platform With Operational Hours Behind It
The counter-UAS announcement lands at a stage when the Mwari has moved well beyond prototype status. Paramount announced at DSEI 2023 that nine customisable Mwaris had been delivered to its first two customers: Mozambique, the launch customer, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which placed an order for six aircraft at the end of 2021. Mozambique’s Air Force had accumulated over 70 flight hours on dedicated reconnaissance and surveillance missions by the time of that announcement. The Mwari has been sighted operating in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, where the government has been fighting an Islamist insurgency linked to the Islamic State since 2017, making it one of the first African-built combat aircraft to accumulate real ISR hours in an active African conflict zone, as Military Africa reported at the time.
Production takes place at Paramount Group’s facility at Wonderboom National Airport outside Pretoria, where serial manufacture began once the nine-aircraft order confirmed commercial viability. The weapons integration programme, which the then chief executive of Paramount Aerospace Industries Mike Levy described as coming soon for the launch customer in early 2023, brought the aircraft closer to its full precision strike capability, a capability that the counter-UAS configuration now extends into the air-to-air intercept role for low-altitude drone targets. The Mwari also entered an agreement with S-Plane at AAD 2022 to integrate the company’s X-KIT optionally piloted vehicle conversion technology, allowing the aircraft to be flown with or without an onboard crew, a capability that adds a further dimension to its potential C-UAS applications in hazardous or contested environments.
The Market Context: Africa’s Drone Threat Demands a Response
The Mwari Counter-UAS configuration arrives as the broader market for airborne drone intercept solutions begins to take shape. It is not alone in this space. Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano is pursuing a counter-UAS role through its partnership with Valkyrie Aero and its Gunslinger AI target classification suite, with a marketable offering expected after demonstrations later in 2026. US Africa Command has been testing its CURTAIN CALL counter-drone swarm concept in California, conducting a second field test in April and May 2026 against coordinated multi-drone attack scenarios. Ground-based systems from Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Elbit Systems, and from Turkey’s ASELSAN, are available to African buyers, though ground systems address the problem differently from an airborne interceptor.
What the Mwari offers that most ground-based and many airborne options do not is the combination of mobility, altitude reach, sensor flexibility, and weapons modularity in a platform that is already in production, already operational in Africa, and already priced for African defence budgets. Military Africa’s Africa Drone Procurement Report 2026 documents that more than 53 percent of all recorded drone procurements across the continent took place in the five years from 2020 to 2026, with armed drones now deployed by state and non-state actors alike across more than 20 countries. The same report notes that China supplies approximately 30 percent of total drone volume on the continent, with Wing Loong and Rainbow CH series aircraft fielded widely across active conflict zones. Both the proliferation of the threat and the identity of the suppliers point toward a counter-UAS capability gap that is both urgent and growing.
At Eurosatory 2026 in Paris in June, Paramount’s presence drew continued attention from European NATO-member states looking at cost-effective border surveillance and counter-insurgency aircraft. The counter-UAS configuration announced weeks later extends that conversation into a mission area that European border and infrastructure protection operators are equally concerned about, given the use of one-way attack drones against energy infrastructure, ports, and military installations across the European theatre.
Why the Architecture Matters as Much as the Capability
The Mwari Counter-UAS announcement is, at its core, a demonstration of what Paramount set out to build when the IMSB was first designed into the airframe. The idea was to create a platform that could be reconfigured for different mission types without being permanently committed to any one of them, so that a customer who buys the aircraft for ISR today can add weapons tomorrow, convert it to an optionally piloted system next year, and configure it as a counter-UAS asset the year after that, all using the same airframe and the same core avionics.
That model runs counter to the traditional procurement logic in which a defence force buys a platform for a defined role and then finds itself locked into that role as the threat evolves. In Africa, where defence budgets are constrained and threats change faster than procurement cycles, the ability to evolve a single airframe’s capability through mission system changes rather than new aircraft purchases has a value that goes beyond the individual configuration. It is a doctrine argument as much as it is a product announcement.
Whether the counter-UAS configuration translates into new orders, and which customers are likely to come first, Paramount has not disclosed. What the July 2026 announcement confirms is that the Mwari’s role as a multi-mission platform is not a marketing description applied after the fact. It was the design intention from the beginning, and it is still being implemented.