CACTUS LABS
Defense systems across lift, sensing, and autonomy — engineered for contested environments.
Explore Our MissionEngineering the Future of Unmanned Airpower
Cactus Labs is the defense technology group of Rohlfs R&D, LLC. We develop unmanned airborne systems across three domains — heavy-lift aircraft, passive counter-UAS sensing, and swarm autonomy — built on non-traditional architectures that change the cost and logistics of fielding capability at scale. Our approach pairs hands-on fabrication with modern software engineering to move from design to demonstrated hardware quickly and deliberately.
Agile Iteration
From CAD to flight test without the overhead. We run short, hardware-rich development cycles that put real test articles in front of the design as early as possible.
Cactus Labs develops across three lines — lift, sensing, and autonomy. Each applies the same philosophy: non-traditional architecture, modern software, and an affordable path to scale.
Project Saguaro
Heavy-Lift VTOL
Project Saguaro is a heavy-lift VTOL aircraft built around a microturbine-driven warm-cycle tip-jet rotor, developed as an entrant in the DARPA Lift Challenge. The architecture eliminates the centralized gearbox, drive shafts, and anti-torque tail rotor of a conventional helicopter. Removing that drivetrain — and the structure that supports it — converts mass that would otherwise be parasitic into payload capacity.
System Specifications
- Propulsion: Microturbine-driven warm-cycle tip-jet rotor, eliminating the mechanical transmission entirely.
- Payload Fraction: Engineered for a high payload-to-empty-weight ratio; performance to be confirmed through flight test.
- Avionics: Software-defined, modular flight control with redundant communications and autonomous flight. Open-architecture design allows new sensor packages and payload data links to be integrated without rewriting core flight software.
- Structural Keel: Modular twin-tube carbon-fiber chassis designed to isolate vibration, carry dynamic lift loads, and scale across airframe sizes.
Engineered for Mission Flexibility & Affordable Mass
Saguaro is designed as a mission-agnostic platform, not a single-purpose airframe. The twin-tube chassis acts as a universal mounting keel, letting operators reconfigure the aircraft across roles — trading lift capacity for fuel and endurance, or a logistics load for a sensor suite — without redesigning the platform.
The structure is built for affordable production: flat-geometry carbon, commercial components, and simplified manufacturing aimed at a cost and build rate suited to fielding at scale rather than one-off exquisite builds.
Project Ocotillo
Passive Volumetric Counter-UAS
Small drones have outpaced the radar built to stop them — they present a minimal radar cross-section, and active radar betrays its own position the moment it powers on.
Ocotillo inverts the approach. A dispersed array of low-cost optical sensors performs pixel-level motion detection at the edge and projects each detection as a vector into a shared three-dimensional volume. Triangulating across the array resolves precise real-time tracks of airborne objects — entirely passively, with no emissions to detect or jam.
The result is a software-defined air-surveillance layer that scales with node count, runs on commercially available hardware, and feeds high-fidelity 3D tracks directly to command systems or downstream effectors.
Passive Operation
Optical-only detection with no RF emissions to locate or jam.
Volumetric Tracking
Multi-camera triangulation resolves 3D tracks across a defined airspace volume.
Commodity Hardware
Built on low-cost cameras and edge compute; coverage scales with node count.
Open Output
Delivers standardized 3D tracks to command systems or downstream effectors.
Project Cholla
Autonomous Swarm, Powered by SwarmOS
Modern conflict is decided by mass, and by who can field it affordably. Cholla is a containerized swarm system built around SwarmOS, our autonomy stack for deploying and sustaining large numbers of small aircraft under a single operator.
From a standard container, the system fields low-cost drones across a range of mission profiles. SwarmOS handles everything that doesn't require a human — autonomous launch, loiter, and target tracking — and runs a self-sustaining charge rotation that recovers depleted aircraft and launches fresh ones to hold the swarm at strength.
The operator stays on the loop, not in the weeds. SwarmOS surfaces prioritized, decision-relevant alerts — track established, target identified, engagement authorized — and lets a single Remote Pilot in Command assume direct first-person control of any aircraft to guide a terminal decision. One operator commands the swarm.
-
Containerized Deployment:Fields and recovers the swarm from a standard transportable container.
-
Self-Sustaining Persistence:Autonomous charge rotation recovers depleted aircraft and launches replacements to hold the swarm at strength.
-
One Operator, Many Aircraft:A single RPIC supervises the swarm on the loop, with prioritized alerts for decision-relevant events.
-
Operator-Authorized Effects:First-person handoff lets the operator take direct control of any aircraft to guide a terminal, human-authorized decision.
Strategic Partnerships & Vendors
Cactus Labs works with suppliers across composite structures, avionics, propulsion, sensing, and autonomy. If you build components and want them proven in a demanding rotary-wing or unmanned-systems environment, we want to hear from you.
Contact Us for Partnership Inquiries
Who We Are
Cactus Labs is the defense technology group of Rohlfs R&D, LLC. We pair the agility of a small, senior engineering team with the structure of an established R&D firm, and we move from design to flight-tested hardware quickly.
Bridging the Gap Between Hardware and Autonomy
The modern defense landscape is split by a historic divide: established aerospace firms struggle with modern software, and agile software companies lack the capability to build hardware that holds up in the field.
Cactus Labs was built to close that gap. In a modern unmanned system the software matters as much as the structure, so we develop both under one roof — as a single integrated design rather than two that meet at the end.
Leadership & Engineering Ethos
Cactus Labs combines hands-on fabrication of affordable, attritable platforms with deep experience in full-stack software, systems engineering, and AI/ML integration. Because our engineering is rooted in modern software development — from telemetry pipelines to containerized, AI-ready data environments — autonomy is part of the design from the start, not bolted on afterward. That dual-domain capability lets us iterate avionics interfaces, manage large payload data streams, and deliver systems that are as intelligent as they are rugged.