Hermius is developing hypersonic aircraft.

Five times a speed of sound across the Atlantic Ocean in about 90 minutes and fast enough to keep yourself from getting shot down in some very highly high-end environments.

The startup officially inaugurated its new heat facility in Florida with a series of successful Pratt & Whitney F-100 engine tests.

It also recently wrapped the ground testing for its first aircraft, the jet-powered quarter-horse at Edwards Air Force Base.

Up next, the quarter-horse's first flight.

Ahead of it all from the Reagan National Defense Forum last month,

I sat down with co-founder and CEO A.J. Pipplica and chief revenue officer, Zach Shore.

So it's a very iterative design process, very SpaceX-inspired.

That's where our technical team is from, highly iterative, hardware-rich,

and one airplane a year.

So as you unlock capability, you advance

the vehicle, advance the business, unleash products into the market space. All these platforms

are also unmanned, which is a really important part of the strategy. One for the Department

of Defense, it decreases their risk posture as they employ these type of capabilities in theaters,

but also it decreases the burden of manufacturing

and certification on us as the creators of the technology because you don't have to worry

about the life of support systems for human beings.

Hermius has plans to roll out commercial service in the 2030s, but to get there, it's

working with the Defense Department, developing autonomous high-speed aircraft to generate

revenue and to establish the technology

before any humans climb aboard.

We also discussed the policy picture, with President-elect Trump just days away from inauguration.

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