South Africa’s biggest privately-owned defence and aerospace company, Paramount, has announced the delivery of its precision strike aircraft, the Mwari, to a launch customer in Africa, which will take place this week.
The name refers to the God of creation in the Shona language.
The founder of the Paramount Group, Ivor Ichikowitz, says while they can’t yet disclose the identity of the customer, the Mwari is in serial production at present, with Paramount testing systems on all of the available aircraft.
He says, “What is important is that the company is delivering one of the most advanced military platforms of its type in the world to a real customer, with real needs.”
This is the first new military aircraft the country has designed, developed and manufactured since the 1980s when Denel produced the Rooivalk attack helicopter.
A proud Ichikowitz referred to it as the most amazingly good news story because nobody believed they could do it.
He says he refused to let the industry die in an environment where nobody seemed to have an aviation industry.
Ichikowitz highlighted the aircraft’s unique qualities, saying the Mwari was the first aircraft of its kind in the world that is designed to have line-interchangeable capabilities.
He elaborated, saying “in the aerospace environment, if an aircraft is produced as an ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) platform it will never be anything but that; if it is produced as a weapons carrier, it will only be that. However, we have produced a system that allows infinite reconfigurability of the aircraft. It is building the pods and the add-on systems that enable the aircraft to perform multiple applications that is really going to take the industry into the future.”
Ichikowitz noted that the first customer is really actually not that important. “This aircraft has as much application in the United States, which is the ultimate First World environment, as it does in East Timor. Today the world is about an asymmetrical battlefield. And nobody knows the asymmetrical space better than South Africans do. That is the thing, that is the thing that is going to keep South Africa and Africa relevant as a major industrial player in the aerospace and defence industry if only we can get our government to understand that.”
The two-seater aircraft can carry as much as a ton of precision-guided weapons and with a lighter load has a range of about 960 kilometres and a speed of around 435 kilometres per hour.
It also offers a short take-off and landing capability with retractable landing gear making it ideal for both semi and unprepared airstrips or landing sites. Libya, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia are among the countries experiencing conflict on the continent.
Paramount has a state-of-the-art aircraft production facility at Wonderboom outside Pretoria. One of the aircraft flown from the facility landed on Thursday at the Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition at Waterkloof Air Force Base where it will be on display, delighting crowds of media, defence officials and foreign military officers.
