Episode Details

About Our Guests

AJ Piplica is the CEO and co-founder of Hermeus, a defense technology company developing hypersonic aircraft powered by air-breathing engines. His technical background centers on aerodynamics and hypersonics, with early career work on rocket engines and re-entry systems. Unlike many defense tech founders who come from software or commercial tech, AJ’s obsession with speed and aviation started in childhood and led him down the space track in college before gravitating toward the aviation side of hypersonics. He chose this path specifically because he wanted to push boundaries rather than spend a career optimizing incremental performance improvements on existing turbine technology.

Zach Shore was recently promoted from Chief Revenue Officer to President of Hermeus. After beginning his career as a Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, Zach served in a variety of industry roles, including as a consultant at Deloitte, Sr Director of Business Development for JAD C2 at Anduril, and Vice President of Product at Vertafore before joining Hermeus in 2022.

About Hermeus

Hermeus builds hypersonic aircraft designed to operate in what AJ calls “the final frontier of aviation.” The company focuses on air-breathing, reusable systems rather than expendable rockets or boost-glide vehicles. Their approach mirrors the commercial space industry’s transformation of launch: prove you can iterate rapidly on full-scale hardware by treating vehicle loss as an acceptable cost of learning when no crew is involved. Hermeus has won Other Transaction Authority (OTA) awards like Chimera and Antares, where the government pays for data and milestone achievements rather than traditional cost-plus development contracts. The company is building 30,000-60,000 pound aircraft, which requires substantial upfront capital and a production-first mindset from day one.

Key Takeaways

1. Separate mission assurance from safety to unlock hardware iteration

The most critical insight from the commercial space revolution applies directly to hypersonics: hardware risk and human safety risk are fundamentally different categories. Traditional aerospace culture treats hardware loss with nearly the same level of concern as human casualties, creating a risk-averse engineering environment that prevents the kind of rapid iteration required to advance into new flight regimes. The regulatory frameworks inherited from crewed aviation assume that preventing crashes is paramount, but autonomous vehicles enable a different approach where controlled crash scenarios become acceptable learning opportunities. This shift in mindset allowed SpaceX to iterate at full vehicle scale, and Hermeus is applying the same principle to air-breathing hypersonics.

2. Build products for operators from day one, not technology looking for a mission

The traditional research lab model follows a sequential path: develop interesting technology, demonstrate it works, then attempt to transition it to an operational program. This approach has a poor track record because it separates technology development from real operational requirements. Hermeus inverts this by starting with the operator and ensuring every development decision solves an actual warfighter problem that delivers substantial value. This explains why product companies often struggle to work with organizations like the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), which see themselves as architects who design capabilities and expect contractors to build to spec. When you show up with your own product vision, there’s inherent friction with a “not built here” culture.

3. Concentration of capital beats diversification for hard tech at scale

The Defense Innovation Unit’s hedge strategy tapped into a fundamental reality of complex hardware systems: you cannot prototype your way to a 60,000 pound aircraft on Smal