Derecho

The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit, which is a department created specifically to accelerate commercial technology into military applications faster than the traditional procurement process allows, has awarded GE Aerospace a contract to develop an air-launched hypersonic test vehicle.

The program is called Derecho.

If you know your weather, a derecho is a long-lived, fast-moving, straight-line wind event, not a tornado.

A wall of wind that travels hundreds of miles and hits like a freight train, it is a fitting name for a vehicle designed to do exactly that to the airspace it crosses.

Scaling those concepts to hypersonic flight is not a simple extension, but it is not starting from a blank page either.

That is a real advantage GE brings to this program.

Here is the other thing worth understanding about a test vehicle program, like Derecho.

It is not the end product, it is the instrument that produces the data that makes the end product possible.

And I thought, "If now isn't the time to jump and dive for cover, there is no better time." And so I just dove out of the way, and honestly, two seconds later there was a tree right where I'd been standing.

These are devastating derechos, and science says they could double how often they form here in a warming climate.

This change isn't always the most visible, impacting those we don't always see.

[birds chirping] It's the opening minute at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Roseville, one of America's busiest wildlife hospitals.

My name is Tony, last name is England, and I live in, uh, Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

I've heard it both ways.

No, Dericho might actually be it.

I think I said Dericho once and people were like, he thinks it's pronounced Dericho.

I was like, yeah, I

do think that.