Bringing Mission Autonomy to High-Mach Flight

High-speed aircraft fundamentally rewrite the geometry of the battlespace. Standoff distances shrink, and contested airspace turns dramatically more unforgiving. Yet raw velocity solves only part of the tactical challenge. To make a difference, high-speed aircraft need to think, adapt, and make decisions in real time.

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Today, Hermeus is partnering with Anduril Industries to integrate its flight-proven mission autonomy software directly into the Quarterhorse program.  

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Under this agreement, Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy will serve as the core software engine for mission planning and execution for the Quarterhorse Mk 2 platform. By pairing our high-speed, uncrewed aircraft with an end-to-end mission brain, we are building a capability designed to run complex, collaborative operations alongside human warfighters from day one.  

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The partnership brings together two critical capabilities. For Hermeus, integrating Lattice lets us test how mission autonomy expands what our aircraft can do, from reacting to changing conditions in flight to coordinating with other assets. For Anduril, our Mk 2 planes represent the first third-party large-scale aircraft integration of its autonomy software outside of Fury, validating Lattice on an independent airframe and in a high-Mach environment.  

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This integration also puts into practice what the Department of War, and the Air Force in particular, has urged industry to embrace: modular, interoperable systems where hardware and software can develop independently. Pairing Anduril’s autonomy stack with Hermeus’ high-speed aircraft shows how cross-industry collaboration can deliver operational capability to the warfighter years ahead of traditional timelines.  

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Our teams are already working closely to integrate Lattice with Quarterhorse and test the combined system, with our first flight planned for 2027. That flight will be a defining test of what can be unlocked when speed and mission autonomy work together for the warfighter.

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