Look out, world. The go-fast guys are teaming up.
Yesterday, super under-the-radar defense tech startup Anduril announced that hypersonic aviation company Hermeus has selected its Lattice for Mission Autonomy stack to make its Quarterhorse Mk 2 aircraft all “look Ma, no hands.”
Lattice for Mission Autonomy has flown Anduril’s Fury CCA, but this is the first time that it will be used to fly a third-party Group 5 aircraft.
- An Anduril spokesperson told Tectonic that this is a commercial deal—in other words, Hermeus is licensing Lattice from Anduril directly.
- And it ain’t just a one-off thing—Anduril will be the autonomy partner for Quarterhorse for the long haul.
The two companies say they are already working on integration and testing in preparation for a “first mission autonomy flight on Quarterhorse Mk 2 planned for 2027.”
Zoom, zoom, baby.
Running man: If you haven’t heard of Hermeus (or, god forbid, Anduril), you haven’t been reading Tectonic enough. As a reminder:
- The company was founded back in 2018 to build lower-cost, ultra-speedy aircraft. Their ultimate goal is hypersonic (or close to it.)
- Right now, they’re working their way up to that—they kicked things off with a variant of the Quarterhorse called Mk 0 for ground testing in 2024, then test-flew a Mk 1 last year.
- Now, they’re working on the Mk 2 series—Mk 2.1 (flew in March), 2.2 (should fly soon and hit supersonic speeds), and the 2.3, which has a steel frame and should fly at speeds above Mach 3. Testing for the 2.3 is slated for next year.
Big brain: Now, Anduril needs no introduction—but there is an interesting ‘read between the lines’ part of this team-up.
- By now, you know that Anduril is one of the two finalists (alongside General Atomics) for the Air Force’s CCA program. Both companies were given production contracts in June to build the service’s first ~150-aircraft fleet by the end of the decade.
- But, did you know that Anduril’s Lattice was also separately tapped in June as one of the finalists to provide mission autonomy for the whole of the CCA program? If those gears haven’t clicked into place yet—that’s going to require integrating the Lattice onto a whole lot of third-party aircraft.
- In fact, the Anduril spokesperson said that they’re planning to integrate Lattice onto all A-GRA compliant aircraft.
Good to start somewhere.
Holding hands: Under the new partnership with Hermeus, Anduril says it will enable “collaborative missions and [provide] a common human-machine interface for operators to interact with the aircraft across the entire mission cycle.” In other words, they’re not just providing the brains, but also the means for human operators to oversee missions.
Once integration is complete, Anduril told Tectonic that in the first mission-autonomy flight next year, Quarterhorse will take off under human control (no autonomy), turn mission autonomy on, fly a mission, then once again land under human control.
- The two companies will then work up to full autonomy incrementally—in each test, mission autonomy will take over more and more of the flight, the Anduril spokesperson said. The missions themselves will also get tougher and tougher.
- Ultimately, the idea is that a human operator on the ground can just push a button and the aircraft will take off, complete a mission, and land—all autonomously.
- One of the trickiest parts of all this will be, well, the speed. Quarterhorse will be flying at high Mach—one of the biggest challenges will be making sure Lattice can keep up with that, the spokesperson said.
(Autonomous) pilots, start your engines.
