Software Engineer Intern - Modeling & Simulation

Hypersonic aircraft startup adding Anduril's autonomy software for 2027 flight. Startups Anduril Industries and Heremus have agreed to integrate Anduril's autonomy software onto Hermeus' hypersonic demonstrator aircraft "Quarterhorse" - uniting two technologies that have drawn keen interest and investment from the Air Force. The firms announced the deal Sept. 3 and said they plan to fly the Quarterhorse Mk 2 aircraft using the Lattice autonomy system in 2027. Hermeus is attempting to build a reusable aircraft that can reach hypersonic speeds, defined as Mach 5 and above, and has received funding and support from the Air Force. Quarterhorse has yet to go that fast - company officials say they're targeting supersonic speeds, or Mach 1-plus, as the next step in their test campaign - but adding autonomy software could enable faster control of the aircraft as it flies around a mile per second. At the same time, preparing the software for the platform will take time. "We will spend the rest of this year on a build-up from software in the loop to integration testing to hardware in the loop and validation testing, then we'll go toward flight," Brett Darcey, vice president for mission autonomy at Anduril, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Anduril is already refining its autonomy software, dubbed Lattice, for the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The firm is competing with Shield AI and Collins Aerospace on that front. Anduril is also building its FQ-44A Fury drone as one of the CCA airframes, along with General Atomics' FQ-42A Dark Merlin. But while Anduril has experience with the CCA program, CCAs aren't meant to be supersonic nor hypersonic like Quarterhorse. The speeds at which that aircraft will operate will require beyond human-like decision-making speeds. The Autonomy Government Reference Architecture that serves as the baseline for most contractor's autonomy software requires that Quarterhorse be able to fly itself "through all regimes of flight, which would include the jump to supersonic," Darcey said. That means human operators will tell the software to fly at a certain velocity, and the software will be responsible for taking the steps to execute the command. "That probably means we're going to do a lot of software and hardware in the loop testing, and a lot of independent validation of what we are doing on the route generation side, and appropriately, I think the monitoring of execution of those routes when we're at those high speeds on the build-up phase all the way to flight," Darcey said. That step-by-step approach is necessary as companies work to build trust in the software's ability to control the aircraft's flight and other taskings for its human operators. Tactics, techniques, and procedures are still developing and evolving to build that trust between human and machine, but Darcey was quick to note that in the development stage there can be too little trust; at times, there can also be too much. He likens it to using an actual horse in warfare. Horses are independent, thinking creatures that can also be trained to do certain things. Cavalrymen would build their trust in the "human-horse system" over time, instead of just jumping on a horse and going to war. A key difference between autonomy software and an actual horse, though, is that the software has built-in debrief functions that will tell the user what it did and why. And as developers of the software, sharing that data with their company partners and the Air Force provides transparency for the process, Darcey said. CCA and mission autonomy. In February, Anduril's developmental YFQ-44A flew with two different mission autonomy software suites on the same aircraft during the same flight, using both Lattice and Shield AI's Hivemind suite. "We do have an advantage with Fury," Darcey said. "That kind of deep platform knowledge definitely is useful." But Darcey was quick to point out that the company isn't tying all its software thinking to its own platform, or even to a single platform. The software used in the CCA program must also be viable for a wide range of aircraft types, based on USAF requirements. "One of the big challenges with mission autonomy is it has to be generally built so it can do the mission requirements of multiple platforms at once," Darcey said. Quarterhorse. Hermeus conducted its first flight with the Mk1 model in May 2025 and then flew its Mk 2.1 demonstration vehicle in another flight in March. That flight ran from Spaceport America past White Sands Missile Range, N.M., with operators piloting the aircraft from a ground-based flight deck, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported. The Mk 2 aircraft is roughly the size of an F-16 fighter. The company won a $1.5 million contract in 2020 for a future hypersonic Presidential and Executive Airlift fleet via AFWERX, an Air Force innovation arm within the Air Force Research Laboratory. In 2021, Hermeus won a $60 million Strategic Funding Increase contract via AFWERX and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center The Defense Innovation Unit awarded Hermeus a $23 million contract in 2023 for technologies related to the unit's larger goal of creating a Hypersonic High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities program. Air, Technology, Anduril, Anduril Industries, Anduril Lattice, autonomy software, Hermeus, mission autonomy, Quarterhorse, software Air & Space Forces Magazine [crypto-donation-box type="tabular" show-coin="all"]

Exclusive: Hermeus unveils Ramjet-X, a "high-Mach" aircraft. Colin Demarest Wed, September 9, 2026 at 3:20 AM PDT * Hermeus is developing Ramjet-X, a super-fast aircraft that serves as a test bed for propulsion and materials science, offering high-Mach flight test as a service. Hermeus is building what it's calling Ramjet-X - a super-fast aircraft that blurs the line between large drone, air-defense target and test bed for propulsion and materials science. Why it matters: It's another big bet on unmanned speed from the company, which this year was valued at $1 billion post-money and moved its headquarters from Georgia to California. Driving the news: Hermeus unveiled Ramjet-X this morning, offering the defense world "high-Mach flight test as a service" and highlighting the national-security insights that come with it. * "I can monetize this as a test asset - B2B, B2G. But it's also an in-house test asset that gets me ramjet flight data and long-duration thermal management flight data now," chief executive Zach Shore told Axios. * "This can seriously drop testing costs, and also advance our propulsion work." Zoom in: Ramjet-X, about 22 feet long and 7 feet across, is designed to launch midair from underneath Quarterhorse, the F-16-sized unmanned aircraft that Hermeus is known for. * First flight of Ramjet-X is expected less than a year from now. Eventually, one Quarterhorse will be able to carry two Ramjet-Xs slung underwing, according to Shore. * "The first-stage booster is the airplane," he said. * "When the plane gets up to Mach 3, I can release a ramjet-only system that's going to accelerate, climb, get up to about 100,000-ish feet, Mach 4-ish speed, and it's going to cruise for tens of minutes." The intrigue: There are echoes of the Cold War-era D-21, M-21 and piggybacking configuration here. * "There is a very clear historical precedent that's really exciting," Shore said. * "Things that we thought were impossible, that we did in the '60s with slide rules - we can do them again." What we're watching: Which companies sign up, and where this endeavor intersects with Pentagon programming, like the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed. The bottom line: "It's very early, but people are definitely intrigued," Shore said. "Tomorrow is now today."

Hermeus and Anduril are racing to build autonomous high-speed aircraft. Caroline Ryan Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Anduril Industries is partnering with high-speed aircraft developer Hermeus to integrate its mission autonomy software into Hermeus' Quarterhorse Mk 2 uncrewed aircraft, as the defense technology company expands the use of its Lattice software across military platforms. Under the agreement, Anduril's Lattice for Mission Autonomy will serve as the core software engine for mission planning and execution on the Quarterhorse Mk 2, Anduril stated in a blog post. The system is designed to allow the aircraft to respond to changing conditions in flight, coordinate with other assets and conduct complex missions alongside human warfighters. Don't Miss: The partnership gives Anduril another independent aircraft on which to test Lattice. Hermeus said the Quarterhorse will be the first large-scale third-party aircraft integration of Anduril's autonomy software outside of its Fury program, allowing the technology to be tested in a high-Mach environment. The companies are already working on the integration, with the first flight of the combined system planned for 2027. Hermeus is developing Quarterhorse with a goal of reaching speeds of up to Mach 3, according to a report from Breaking Defense. The deal comes as Anduril has been rapidly expanding both its software and hardware footprint with the U.S. military. Just this week, the Army awarded Anduril a $65 million production contract as part of a combined $192 million award with Palantir for the Army's Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, or TITAN, program. Anduril will develop ruggedized hardware for the system, which is designed to collect and distribute battlefield intelligence from terrestrial, airborne and space-based sensors. Anduril has also begun production of its FQ-44A Fury autonomous aircraft at its Arsenal-1 manufacturing facility in Ohio. The first aircraft rolled off the production line in July, marking a major step toward scaling the company's autonomous combat aircraft. The company has attracted significant private capital as it scales. In May, Anduril raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, more than doubling its valuation from the previous year.