By: Dawn Zoldi
Mountain Horse Solutions isn’t racing to manufacture the next marquee unmanned system. The company, a subsidiary of Global Ordnance, has carved out a deliberate role in the defense autonomy space as an integrator and facilitator. It identifies gaps across the air, ground, and maritime domains, then pulls together a consortium of partners to fill them. It’s a model born from necessity, shaped by battlefield feedback and now gaining serious traction with the U.S. Army and allied forces. In an exclusive interview from SOF Week 2026 with Rick Budniewski, the company’s Director of UAS/cUAS Programs at Mountain Horse Solutions, a retired warrant officer with 20 years of service, 17 working with unmanned aerial vehicles, explained how his team assembles pragmatic answers to defense’s toughest problems.
From Ordnance to Autonomy: The Strategic Logic
Global Ordnance, Mountain Horse’s parent company, built its reputation supplying large capital munitions to the U.S. Army. The pivot toward unmanned systems wasn’t a departure from that mission, but rather a natural extension of it. As drones proliferated across conflict zones and counter-UAS became an urgent operational requirement, Global Ordnance stood up Mountain Horse Solutions as the subsidiary best positioned to address both sides of that equation: deploying autonomous systems and defeating adversarial ones.
Mountain Horse itself started in an unlikely place. The company’s earlier work focused on CBRNE and protective gear before leadership recognized that drones and counter-drone capabilities were a logical next chapter. Hiring Budniewski,a two-decade Army veteran, accelerated that transition. “We’ve just been growing like crazy trying to figure things out,” he said of the fast-moving defense autonomy market.
The FD1 Interceptor: A Platform Shaped by End Users
The centerpiece of Mountain Horse’s UAS offensive portfolio is the FD1 interceptor drone, developed in collaboration with partner company S3 Werx and Argus Industries. The FD1 began as a ground-to-ground intercept concept, a drone launched from the ground to engage ground targets. Mountain Horse saw broader potential and pushed to expand its operational envelope to include ground-to-air, air-to-air and air-to-ground intercept missions.
That expanded concept earned validation at the international level. Mountain Horse entered the FD1 into Project Flytrap 4.5, a competitive Army challenge run in Germany through XTech and what is now known as PIT. The team was selected, competed, performed well, and, in a move that says something about where the program stands, left their equipment behind with the 52nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team for continued testing and feedback.
The FD1 also incorporates Argus Industries’ AREIS payload system, with additional AI-enabled targeting capabilities integrated through a third partner. That layered approach, multiple best-in-class components assembled around a core platform, reflects Mountain Horse’s broader philosophy. The system is currently undergoing operational assessment.
The UNEX Ground Vehicle: Taking Autonomy off the Flight Line
Mountain Horse’s portfolio extends well beyond the air domain. The UNEX is a fully autonomous ground vehicle sourced from a manufacturer in the Czech Republic and Poland, which Mountain Horse is now working to bring into U.S. production. The UNEX competed in XTech’s Edge Strike Ground challenge in a scenario requiring competitors to demonstrate autonomous ground vehicle capabilities across a 40-kilometer operational zone. Mountain Horse won that competition as well. They also left the UNEX behind with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment for live testing and evaluation.
What distinguishes Mountain Horse’s approach here, as with the FD1, is the feedback loop built into those extended field evaluations. Engineers design systems with certain assumptions, but soldiers operate them with different priorities. The gap between those two perspectives shows up in details that matter operationally, such as how batteries are recharged in the field, where power outlets are positioned or how charging integrates with a soldier’s other equipment. “A lot of people we work with aren’t prior service, so they don’t have the full grasp of what the main need is,” Budniewski said. “Those are the changes and modifications we’re making and we’re constantly bringing that back to them.”
Maritime Domain: Autonomous Undersea Operations
Mountain Horse is also moving into the maritime domain through a partnership with a Spanish company. Their current unmanned undersea vehicle, called the SWISE, is a torpedo-sized, fully autonomous submarine designed for persistent maritime surveillance and threat detection. The system operates on command-driven mission parameters that a naval commander defines in terms of mission area and objective. The SWISE executes autonomously, but a human remains on the loop to authorize any engagement. It’s a configuration that reflects current defense autonomy doctrine that teams up machines for detection and positioning and humans for final decision-making.
The Sugar Cube: Soldier-Level Counter-UAS Detection
On the counter-UAS side, Mountain Horse has developed one of its most operationally proven products, the Sugar Cube. It’s a body-worn drone detection device small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. The name came from Ukraine, where Mountain Horse has deployed thousands of Sugar Cubes and where the soldiers nicknamed it the “Sucurock,” which translates to sugar cube in English.
The Sugar Cube detects drone signatures out to at least 15 kilometers. In its most basic configuration, it emits an audible alert when a drone is detected. More advanced implementations incorporate AI-driven self-triangulation and push threat data to soldiers’ ATAK devices to provide a map-based picture of drone location. There are more capabilities under development.
A Layered C-UAS Architecture Across All Echelons
The thread that runs through Mountain Horse’s entire portfolio is a commitment to layered, scalable counter-UAS architecture. Budniewski is emphatic that no single system defeats the drone threat across all echelons. Mountain Horse’s answer is a spectrum of capabilities connected through software and AI integration.
“We know not one system fits all,” Budniewski said. “We’re going from soldier level detection all the way to theater level potential assets and just trying to figure out how to fit that gap.” He continued, “We try to figure out what is the need, or what may be the need, and we work with multiple different organizations to come up with that solution together.”
With a strong set of partners and operational feedback from battlefields and challenge programs across Ukraine, Germany and the U.S. Army informing product development, Mountain Horse is building its portfolio the hard but best way, in the field, alongside the end users whose lives depend on it.
For more information, visit mountainhorse.com or globalordnance.com.