Dec. 15, 2025

By Joe Sneve, The Dakota Scout

A multi-rotor drone and its fixed-wing, one-way attack counterpart that flanked a wall-sized American flag inside a northern Sioux Falls warehouse Friday weren’t the main attraction.

Rather, Pentagon officials and South Dakota dignitaries gathered for an invite-only ceremony at MMS Products Inc. to get a look at a newly developed military advancement that will give South Dakota a front-row seat to the U.S. military’s race to drone warfare dominance.

“The fortunate thing for us is that we’re going to be able to do this in Sioux Falls — with Sioux Falls citizens, with South Dakotans,” MMS president and CEO Tim Dunnigan said, announcing that the young warfare-technology company will construct facilities here to mass-produce munitions components considered revolutionary to the country’s national security efforts.

Tim Dunnigan address attendees at Friday’s ceremony inside MMS’ Sioux Falls location.

That’s thanks to a $35 million Department of War contract recently awarded to MMS.

The company does not produce drones themselves, however — it builds the munitions systems that attach to unmanned aircraft, turning them into operationally ready weapons.

The distinction of MMS’ munitions systems, according to company officials and Pentagon representatives, is twofold: Its agnostic design is compatible with virtually any drone platform — from one-way attack drones to fixed-wing or rotorcraft utility drones — and proprietary fusion technology that enhances safety during production, shipping, storage and pre-launch handling.

MMS’ newly secured contract comes as the Pentagon moves to dramatically expand U.S. drone capabilities. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump announced plans to add more than 1 million drones across military branches, while War Secretary Pete Hegseth has stressed that America is lagging behind adversaries in unmanned warfare.

A June executive order and July memorandum signed by Hegseth removed restrictive policies that had slowed drone production, signaling a new era of rapid acquisition and experimentation.

Dunnigan, a military veteran who served as a soldier, noncommissioned officer and officer over 22 years before retiring to the private technology, innovation and education sector, said the war in Ukraine highlighted the risks of improvised munitions, where forces adapted explosives not designed for drones. While those ad hoc weapons proved effective, that approach carries safety hazards and reduces operational reliability.

MMS’ systems, he said, are designed to be field-ready, safe and simple to use — with any drone that exists now or in the future. And that’s even more appealing to the U.S. military that’s aggressively advancing its drone warfare capabilities.

“Modern warfare and contemporary warfare are different things,” Dunnigan said. “Contemporary warfare, this is changing on the fly. We don’t know what’s happening tomorrow. We have to be contemporary.”

There were no cameras and no public announcements at the tightly controlled event Friday, and there were explicit instructions that the small circle of military, economic development, political and company officials not publicly disseminate or broadcast what they saw or heard during the gathering.

While The Dakota Scout was granted exclusive media access, neither MMS nor military officials provided details when asked how many employees will be necessary at a planned munitions systems manufacturing plant now in the works after inking the deal with the Pentagon. They also declined to say how many units MMS is obligated to deliver to the U.S. military under the two-year contract, which The Scout was unable to locate during an extensive review of publicly available federal contract databases.

What is known is that MMS is poised to be a player in the military weapons industry for years to come, said Lt. Col. Matt Limeberry, who heads the Army’s Technology Readiness Experimentation, or T-REX, program and multiservice prototype operations. His teams field-tested MMS’ munitions modular before the contract was awarded.

Launched in Florida less than three years ago, MMS had always planned a dual-residency strategy, executives said, with South Dakota chosen as the site for a large-scale manufacturing operation.

The company’s lightweight, small-scale design makes the components highly versatile, and Limeberry said demand for them will remain strong as long as explosives remain part of modern warfare.

“This will be a normal component that will fit in any drone environment that we have,” Limeberry told The Scout following the ceremony, referencing the mechanism that munitions equipped to a multi-rotor drone called a “quadcopter” hang from. “This, what you see here, will be here for a long time.”

That a munitions modular that is universally compatible across drone platforms exists brings a level of efficiency to safety regulators and decision-makers at the Pentagon. Among them is An “Mike” Tran, acting deputy assistant secretary of war for prototyping and experimentation, who oversees the military’s joint experimentation and technology assessments like the T-REX initiative.

“This is what the new era of prototyping and experimenting is all about,” he said. “We move fast, we stay fast, and we continue to deliver that capability to the speed that the world demands.”

The story is brought to you in partnership with The Dakota Scout, a local news source focused on government and politics. To learn more, click here.