Federal Ammunition, Mossberg and Palladyne AI launch SwarmShot counter-drone interceptor swarm

TLDR

• Federal Ammunition, Mossberg and Palladyne AI announced the joint development of SwarmShot, a modular counter-UAS system that turns compatible drones into reusable air-to-air interceptors.¹²
• SwarmShot combines Federal's counter-UAS shotshell ammunition, a Mossberg airborne weapon module and Palladyne AI's IntelliSwarm autonomy software.¹²
• The system will first be developed as a mission module for Palladyne AI's Gremlin-X Group 1 quadcopter, before the companies offer an integration kit for compatible third-party aircraft.¹²
• IntelliSwarm is designed to let multiple SwarmShot-equipped aircraft coordinate target allocation and intercept paths autonomously, building on swarming capability Palladyne AI has demonstrated with the U.S. Army.¹²

Federal Ammunition, Mossberg and Palladyne AI Corp. announced the joint development of SwarmShot, a modular autonomous airborne counter-unmanned aircraft system designed to convert compatible drones into reusable, swarm-coordinated interceptors.¹² The system combines Federal's specialized counter-UAS ammunition, a lightweight Mossberg weapon module engineered for airborne operation, and Palladyne AI's IntelliSwarm autonomy stack, which pairs its BRAIN avionics with SwarmOS collaborative-autonomy software.¹

SwarmShot will initially be built as a modular mission add-on for Gremlin-X, Palladyne AI's Group 1 quadcopter mini-bomber, letting the same aircraft switch between its existing precision-strike role and an autonomous counter-UAS mission; once qualified on Gremlin-X, the companies plan to offer SwarmShot as an integration kit for other manufacturers' drones.¹² Federal will lead ammunition design and terminal-effect optimization, drawing on its recent U.S. Army counter-UAS ammunition contract; Mossberg will develop the airborne weapon module, covering remote operation, recoil management and safety; and Palladyne AI will handle aircraft integration, fire control and multi-interceptor coordination.¹

IntelliSwarm is built on autonomous swarming capability Palladyne AI says it has already demonstrated with the U.S. Army at Project Convergence Capstone 6 and other exercises, where it let heterogeneous drones from multiple manufacturers share information and allocate responsibilities in real time while soldiers retained authority over weapons use.¹² Applied to SwarmShot, the system is meant to receive validated threat tracks from existing sensors, autonomously allocate targets among available interceptors, calculate intercept paths and redirect the swarm as threats move or multiply.¹ "One SwarmShot-equipped aircraft is a reusable interceptor. Multiple aircraft operating through IntelliSwarm become a coordinated kinetic swarm," said Ben Wolff, Palladyne AI's president and CEO.¹ Development plans include ammunition and terminal-effect testing, airborne weapon integration, live-fire flight testing and autonomous multi-interceptor coordination; schedules and financial terms were not disclosed.¹²

Why it matters: most counter-drone kinetic effectors are single-use or ground-based; SwarmShot is a bet that pairing cheap, reusable ammunition with autonomous swarming on an existing attack-drone airframe can give militaries a mobile, scalable layer against drone swarms without each engagement burning an expensive interceptor missile.

Note for Webmaster: 2 independent sources — the companies' own Business Wire release and Unmanned Airspace's independent trade-press writeup confirming the same program details; other hits (StockTitan, Yahoo Finance, Finviz, FT) are the same wire release re-syndicated, not counted as separate sources. Thumbnail: 2026-10-08-palladyne-swarmshot.jpg (sourced from the Business Wire image via Yahoo Finance's og:image, since StockTitan/Business Wire's own pages returned no retrievable og:image tag), verified genuine JPEG.