Hermeus, a company operationalizing hypersonic aircraft, has unveiled its first aircraft — Quarterhorse Mk 1 — which will take flight later this year. Designed, built, and integrated in just seven months, this is the company’s second fully integrated vehicle in the past year, following Quarterhorse Mk 0 which completed its test campaign in November 2023. This rate of iteration represents a new standard of one aircraft per year, which the team has set for the pace of aircraft development.

Quarterhorse Mk 1 is an uncrewed, remotely piloted aircraft powered by a GE J85 engine. Its primary mission is to demonstrate high-speed takeoff and landing – a key enabling capability unique to future hypersonic aircraft on the company’s roadmap. Flight tests will take place at Edwards Air Force Base. This milestone marks the transition from the ‘design and build’ phase to the ‘integrated test’ phase for Mk 1. The coming months will see the vehicle endure a battery of tests across its subsystems, ground station, operations, and human factors to prepare it for flight test later this year. Each aircraft in the Quarterhorse program progressively increases in complexity, building on the learnings of prior builds. This approach manages program risk across multiple vehicles and accelerates the delivery of products and services to Hermeus customers.

Hermeus’ strategic decision to transition to the more capable F100 engine for Quarterhorse Mk 2 accelerates the company’s roadmap to Darkhorse, a multi-mission hypersonic aircraft for defense and national security missions, while simultaneously delivering a compelling intermediate product, the world’s only purpose-built high-Mach drone. Source: ‘Hermeus.com‘.