<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharyshore/"><u>Zach Shore</u></a>, President of <a href="https://www.hermeus.com/"><u>Hermeus</u></a>, and his team have demonstrated a turbine-based combined cycle engine in a wind tunnel for roughly $20 million. NASA and DARPA spent nine figures on the same architecture. The system uses proprietary modifications to an F100-229 to hit Mach 3, then routes airflow around the cocooned turbine directly into a ramjet to reach Mach 5. Reverse the process to decelerate. The result is reusable air-breathing flight from zero to Mach 5. No rockets required for acceleration or terminal glide on descent. They proved the complete architecture with a GE J85 engine. Now they&#39;re scaling to the F100-229 with the ramjet integration coming next.</p><p>Quarterhorse, their 30,000-pound Mach 2+ aircraft powered by the F100-229, flies from White Sands this year. It&#39;s not a test article; it&#39;s the first platform with actual utility. Think unmanned F-16 capability stack: electronic warfare, rails for weapons, red air, high-speed target. Darkhorse will hit low Mach 5 before decade&#39;s end. Zach walks through why they&#39;re building metal airframes with removable panels and modular inlets rather than exotic composites, how they&#39;re using proven components like the F-16 landing gear and MiG fuselage design to avoid reinventing solved problems, and why demonstrating incremental capability beats PowerPoint pitches when you&#39;re trying to crack into integrated heavy systems programs. </p><p><strong>Topics discussed:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Demonstrating turbine-based combined cycle engine architecture in wind tunnel for $20M versus NASA/DARPA&#39;s nine-figure development </p></li><li><p>Routing airflow around cocooned F100-229 turbine into ramjet at Mach 3 to achieve reusable Mach 5 flight capability</p></li><li><p>Building 10,000-pound unmanned aircraft from design to flight in 15 months to validate high-speed outer mold line</p></li><li><p>Deploying Quarterhorse 30,000-pound Mach 2+ platform with F-16 capability stack including electronic warfare and weapons rails</p></li><li><p>Designing metal airframes with removable panels and modular inlets rather than exotic composites for production scalability</p></li><li><p>Using proven components like F-16 landing gear and MiG fuselage design to avoid reinventing solved engineering problems</p></li><li><p>Navigating defense R&amp;D contracting where labs compete with private innovators and prime contractors receive cost-plus incentives</p></li><li><p>Building hardware-rich iterative development approach with smaller engines before scaling to full F100-229 and ramjet integration  </p></li></ul>