Well, gosh darn. Booz Allen ($BAH) is really doubling down on the whole defense tech thing.
Yesterday, the government services giant announced that it’s acquiring Ultra I&C Mission Solutions—part of the Cobham Ultra Group—for a cool $720M. When the deal closes (expected in the second quarter of next year), Ultra Mission Solutions will become a fully owned subsidiary of BA.
Super edgy: Ultra Mission Solutions is very much one of those nuts and bolt-y defense tech companies we love to talk about.
- The company builds mission software and edge compute—and it’s, like, quietly everywhere.
- The Mission Solutions unit (part of the broader Cobham Ultra Group business) is headquartered in Austin and is headed by Mladen Brkic (President of the mission solutions division).
- This ain’t no new-age defense tech startup—the company has over “100 years of heritage,” per BA’s announcement. Translation: Some of the units and tech the mission solutions division now covers have been around for about a century.
Racks on racks: And a century later, they’ve built a whole lot.
On the mission software side, they’ve got:
- ADSI – one of the military’s most widely used tactical data fusion and situational awareness tools. This is one of their flagship products and the core of a $86.8M contract with the US Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) Mission Command System for Guam defense (awarded in 2025), and a $39M Marine Corps’ Common Aviation Command and Control System (CAC2S) contract awarded in 2024 (among a whole lot else).
- Rain – software for moving and sharing data across disparate systems.
- ACTS – command-and-control and mission coordination software.
- Apex – software that helps integrate data and support battlefield decision-making.
As for edge compute and encryption management, they’ve got:
- Knox – ruggedized processing hardware and software stack that lets operators run AI and data processing at the edge, even when disconnected from the cloud. Knox is integrated on major platforms including the MQ-9. Small potatoes.
- They’ve also got Argus, CARDS, and CyberFence on the encryption side of things—these cover cryptographic key management, secure data movement, and encryption for military networks.
And beyond those Marine Corps and Army contracts, they were also selected (alongside Dell) to provide the Air Force’s Software Programmable Open Mission Systems Compliant (SPOC) processor, and have a prime spot on the Air Force’s Enterprise-Wide Agile Acquisition Contract (EWAAC) (a $46 billion ceiling IDIQ).
In other words, on the whole mission software and edge compute side of things, they’re everywhere—and that’s why Booz is paying a pretty penny for them. $750M for a roughly 220-person company is fairly spenny.
Harden up: It’s worth noting that this acquisition falls squarely within Booz’s broader push away from squishy government services and towards defense technology.
- As anyone inside the Beltway will know, traditionally, Booz did all the fun consulting, systems engineering, IT, and government support kind of things.
- But in the last few years, the company has pushed hard into the defense side of things—they’ve launched their own products, including MDK, EdgeXtend, and Sit(x), which are focused on AI, edge infrastructure, and battlefield operations.
- They’ve also partnered with companies like Anduril to enter the oh-so-shiny defense tech world—back in May, the company announced that Booz’s software now runs directly on Anduril’s Menace compute-and-communications platform and integrates with Lattice.
- There’s also Booz Allen Ventures (BAV), which invests in a lot of the defense tech companies you know and love—including Firestorm, HavocAI, HiddenLevel, Scout AI, and a whole lot more.
- BAV upped its fund to $300M last summer and invested $400M in a16z’s Growth fund in January. Money moves.
“Technological superiority is essential to U.S. national security, and maintaining our advantage requires a relentless focus on speed and outcomes,” Horacio Rozanski, Chairman and CEO of Booz Allen, said in a statement. “Booz Allen is strategically investing to accelerate delivery of our defense tech products into national security missions.”