Hermeus has unveiled a new vehicle designed to reach high-Mach speeds during test flights without relying on a large, expensive booster rocket. The low-cost, expendable, ramjet-powered Ramjet-X will be released from the company’s reusable Quarterhorse aircraft and will continue flying at high-Mach speed once it separates. The announcement was made on September 9, 2026, in Los Angeles.
Ramjet engines need to reach a certain speed before they can operate effectively. Rather than building a separate launch system to get there, Hermeus chose to use its already-flying Quarterhorse platform instead. Once released, Ramjet-X continues under its own power while Quarterhorse returns to base for future test missions.
Ramjet-X Enables High-Mach Flight Test as a Service
Ramjet-X will also allow Hermeus to offer High-Mach Flight Test as a Service (FTaaS), expanding access to flight environments that have historically been costly and difficult to reach. Customers and partners will be able to integrate sensors, communications and compute systems, autonomy solutions, material samples, propulsion technologies, and other experimental hardware and software onto the vehicle for testing under sustained high-Mach conditions. By offering a repeatable platform, launch architecture, and flight-test infrastructure, the company aims to let customers focus directly on the technology being evaluated, rather than developing a bespoke high-speed flight vehicle and test program for every experiment.
Hermeus CEO Zach Shore noted that high-speed flight testing is extremely costly and offers few chances to get it right, adding that the vehicle’s approach lets new systems be placed into sustained high-Mach environments without building an expensive one-off test program each time. He said combining speed, sustained flight, and scalability into a single system lowers the barriers to gathering valuable data from these conditions and accelerates programs for both Hermeus and its customers.
Ramjet-X Development Already Underway
Development of Ramjet-X is progressing. Hermeus is testing the vehicle’s ramjet engine at its HEAT facility in Jacksonville, Florida, while work on high-temperature structures continues at the company’s headquarters in El Segundo, California. Integrated vehicle testing is currently planned for 2027.
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Source: C4Defence–Hermeus
