Ukraine deploys first British MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin air defense system against Russian drones.

The 156th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment published a video showing the first deployment in Ukraine of the British-supplied Terrahawk Paladin air defense system, mounted on a MAN HX 8x8 truck.

On November 18, 2025, Ukraine's 156th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment published a video showing the first deployment of the British MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin very short-range air defence (VSHORAD) system with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Installed on a NATO-standard flatrack carried by a German MAN HX 8x8 tactical truck chassis, the Terrahawk Paladin is shown equipped with the optional protective screens around the radar mast and sensor assemblies. The video follows earlier announcements in 2023 that Ukraine would receive Terrahawk Paladin systems from the United Kingdom to counter Russia's drone and missile attacks.
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The British MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin very short-range air defence (VSHORAD) system will help Ukraine to counter Russia's low-flying drones and helicopters. (Picture source: 156th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment)

The 156th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment, named after Maksym Kryvonis, is a Ukrainian Air Force unit subordinated to the Air Command Center and based in Zolotonosha, Cherkasy Oblast, where it is responsible for the aerial defence of key administrative and industrial areas. It traces its origin to the 156th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the 14th Guards Combined Arms Army, which took an oath of loyalty to Ukraine on January 12, 1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was subsequently reorganised as a regiment. In 2007, the unit relocated from Oleksiivka in Odesa Oblast to eastern Ukraine, with divisions deployed at Avdiivka, Luhansk, and Mariupol, and its Avdiivka “Zenit” position became a focal point during the early phases of the conflict in Donbas.

The regiment provided fire support around Donetsk Airport with ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns, suffered casualties from sniper and artillery fire in 2014–2016, and was eventually evacuated to Zolotonosha. Since 2014, it has been credited with destroying at least 32 Russian drones in Donetsk and Luhansk, then during the period from 25 February to 21 May 2022, it provided missile coverage of Kyiv and forces in Kyiv Oblast (with Soviet Buk-M1s) and destroyed 59 targets, including 6 aircraft, 13 helicopters, 36 drones, and 4 cruise missiles. From the start of the full-scale invasion through November 2025, the regiment reports operations across Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Poltava, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, for a total of 619 destroyed targets, including 542 Russian drones, 29 helicopters, 13 aircraft, and 35 cruise missiles.

Ukraine’s acquisition of the Terrahawk Paladin is linked to a British announcement on October 11, 2023, in which the country published a new package of military support to Ukraine valued at more than 100 million pounds, financed through the International Fund for Ukraine established by the United Kingdom and Denmark in 2022 and joined by Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland and Lithuania. Within this package, over 70 million pounds of capabilities were earmarked for air defence, including the MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin system, described as part of an effort to provide close-range protection of high-value sites and critical infrastructure from missile and drone attacks. The same package included engineering and mobility assets such as mine-clearing equipment, bridging for river and trench crossings, heavy plant vehicles to remove obstacles, and additional equipment to support the Ukrainian counteroffensive and defensive operations. The video from the 156th Regiment indicates that at least one of the Terrahawk Paladins, equipped with the 30 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II gun, has now been integrated on MAN HX carriers in Ukraine, in line with the system’s use of modules

The Terrahawk Paladin itself originates from MSI Defence Systems’ long experience with naval close-range weapon stations, particularly the Seahawk Lightweight mounts, and reflects growing demand over the last decade for land-based very short-range air defence and counter-unmanned aerial systems. The baseline Terrahawk concept was unveiled in 2022 as a palletised VSHORAD system combining a remotely operated 30 mm Seahawk-derived gun mount, the company’s Surveillance Acquisition Targeting Optical System, and mast-mounted FIELDctrl radar panels on a NATO-standard Demountable Rack Offload and Pickup System (D.R.O.P.S.) flatrack, designed for trucks such as Leyland, DAF, Rheinmetall MAN, and Foden load carriers. In 2023, MSI-DS introduced the mobile Terrahawk Paladin variant at events such as DSEI in London and Eurosatory in Paris to provide a fully integrated mobile and deployable short-range air defence system. The company also situates Terrahawk Paladin within a wider Terrahawk VSHORAD family that includes static flatrack and trailer-based deployable options and lighter Terrahawk remote weapon stations, sharing common effectors, sensors, and fire control to simplify integration on land and maritime platforms. International interest has emerged beyond Ukraine, with the Royal Jordanian Air Force confirming acquisition and displaying Terrahawk Paladin during Exercise “Sky Shield” in 2025, where two systems with mast-mounted radar were used.

The Terrahawk Paladin is centered on the 30×173 mm Mk44 Bushmaster II chain gun in its standard configuration, with an option in some variants to install a 40 mm calibre weapon. The stabilized mount typically carries around 200 to 240 ready-to-fire rounds in a dual-feed system, allowing the crew to switch rapidly between ammunition types without manual reloading, for example, between programmable air burst or proximity fuzed high explosive rounds for small unmanned aircraft and armour-piercing or high explosive rounds for surface targets. The Terrahawk Paladin has an engagement range for drone-sized aerial targets of roughly 2 km when using programmable air burst ammunition, with longer slant ranges possible against larger or less manoeuvrable targets, and it is described as effector agnostic in principle, with the ability to host other direct fire weapons up to 40 mm and even missile or laser-guided rocket pods such as the APKWS. The gun mount is paired with the SATOS electro-optic director, which combines a daylight camera, thermal imager, and a laser rangefinder with a quoted range of around 10 km, enabling detection, identification, and precise range measurement at day and night.

The radar component is based on four active electronically scanned array (AESA) panels on a mast that provide 360-degree surveillance and track multiple objects in azimuth and elevation, feeding data into a fire control system with artificial intelligence-assisted video tracking, ballistic computation, semi-autonomous cue and slew functions, and options for enhanced target recognition algorithms developed with Advanced Protection Systems. This fire control architecture can support up to 16 weapon mounts in a network, and MSI-DS associates it with mesh C3/C4 systems that integrate sensors, fire control, and weapon stations into a flexible wide area defence network where platforms can operate individually or as coordinated nodes at the battery or company level. The complete Terrahawk Paladin module, including weapon, sensors, power generation and control electronics, has a typical mass of less than 10 tons and is designed for mounting on trailers, NATO standard flat racks or vehicle platforms, with offset remote control via hard wired or line of sight links that allow the crew to operate from protected shelters at a distance from the weapon station.

The Terrahawk Paladin protects high-value targets, critical infrastructure, troop concentrations, and vulnerable points against low-altitude threats such as nano and micro multirotor and fixed wing drones, larger vertical and short take off tactical unmanned aircraft, and loitering munitions and cruise type weapons in their terminal phase of approach. Beyond unmanned aircraft, the Terrahawk Paladin could be used against low-flying rotary and fixed-wing aircraft attempting terrain masking profiles, as well as ground and maritime targets such as lightly protected vehicles and fast inshore attack craft, reflecting its naval origin and cross-domain applications. In Ukraine, the Terrahawk Paladin will likely be deployed as a singleton point defence unit or as part of a layered air defence network to create overlapping coverage around cities, power plants, and military facilities already protected by missile batteries, to defeat dense waves of low-cost drones such as the Shahed while reserving missile interceptors for higher value or higher altitude targets such as cruise missiles.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.