Paramount Group has integrated ASELSAN’s ASELFLIR-500 electro-optical targeting system onto the Mwari, the South African light multi-role aircraft built at the company’s Wonderboom campus north of Pretoria.
Paramount announced the integration on 27 July 2026, with ASELSAN confirming it the following day. Neither company has stated that the aircraft has flown with the turret fitted.
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The ASELFLIR-500 is a 15-inch gimbal built around a single 220 mm aperture carrying a high-definition mid-wave infrared camera, an eight-megapixel day visual channel and a high-definition short-wave infrared channel.
It weighs roughly 54 kg and measures 480 mm by 520 mm, sitting on four-axis gimbals with two-axis stabilization of the optics and continuous 360-degree rotation.
The unit carries a laser range finder and designator rated to approximately 35 km, alongside a laser pointer and illuminator and a laser spot tracker, and ASELSAN states the designator is compatible with NATO-coded munitions.
ASELSAN markets the turret as delivering 20-inch payload performance in a 15-inch envelope, and applies deep-learning algorithms to image quality across the optical channels. Detection, recognition and identification ranges are not published.
The turret sits within a portfolio the company has been steadily pulling in-house, an approach visible in its work on a military 5G core free of foreign dependencies.
The system entered serial production in February 2024 and has since been exported to more than 20 countries. Existing integrations include the Bayraktar TB2 and TB3.
Both companies have been direct about the commercial logic. Paramount’s own statement says the integration holds the potential to create “new opportunities” for the Mwari programme in markets more familiar with ASELSAN’s capabilities.
ASELSAN framed it the same way, describing the work as expected to support access to new international markets. Neither has identified a customer requirement behind the integration.
The Mwari itself descends from the Advanced High Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft, a two-crew pusher-prop design with stadium seating and an interchangeable mission systems bay.
It runs a PT6A-66B turboprop rated at 950 shaft horsepower, holds up to 10 hours of endurance, carries six underwing hardpoints and cruises at around 230 knots with a mission range near 1,150 nautical miles.
The order book has stayed thin and largely undisclosed. Paramount Aerospace Industries announced nine aircraft on order with deliveries underway to an unnamed customer in September 2022, and the Democratic Republic of Congo ordered several the following year.
Mozambique operates the type, and stated manufacturing capacity at Wonderboom runs to three aircraft a year, or five where demand requires it.
Mike Levy, chief executive of Paramount Aerospace Industries, has said the pusher-prop configuration and stadium seating afford its pilots “unparalleled visibility”.
The Americanized Bronco II variant, offered to United States Special Operations Command with Leidos and Vertex Aerospace, did not win the Armed Overwatch competition.
The programme also carries a difficult industrial history, having been placed into business rescue in 2018 with the Wonderboom factory shut and its workforce sent home, before Paramount assumed full control and restarted production in 2020.
The ASELFLIR-500 arrives already in serial manufacture and fielded across more than 20 countries, rather than as a sensor requiring development work inside the South African supply chain.
For ASELSAN, the Mwari adds a Western-supplied airframe to a customer list that has grown steadily through Turkish platforms, following a €1.47 billion contract in July to expand Steel Dome air defence production.
The turret fit also arrives as Turkish suppliers have been breaking into NATO markets on the back of European rearmament, and as ASELSAN’s guidance work has extended to indigenous munitions such as TOYGUN on the KIZILELMA.
Neither Paramount nor ASELSAN has announced a weapons integration programme, a flight test schedule, or a launch customer for the configuration.
