If big things happen, as the saying goes, “gradually, and then all at once,” it sure feels like we’re starting to see the great defense tech roll-up transitioning into the “all at once” timeline before our very eyes.
Yesterday, California-based drone-maker Aevex announced that it’s reached a deal to buy Baltimore-based unmanned surface vessel company BlackSea for a cool $650M—a move that Aevex says will “deliver a leading portfolio spanning air, surface, and subsea domains.”
- The deal—expected to close in September—includes roughly $250M in cash and $350M in Aevex stock, priced at $27.50/share (currently at about $22.75/share).
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Maritime is all the rage, and Aevex wants in.
Drone dawgs: To back things up, Aevex is one of those “grind in silence” companies with little flash but big orders. The company, founded in 2007, is best known for its aerial autonomy offerings, including:
- Disruptor, a Group 3 drone that packs a punch with 14 hours of endurance, an 870-mile range, and a 50lb payload capacity. It’s mostly billed as a precision-strike UAS, but it can also carry ISR and electronic warfare payloads. This falls under Aevex’s “Phoenix Ghost” family of systems, developed with the Air Force and secretly deployed en masse to Ukraine starting in 2022.
- Atlas, a precision-strike system chosen by the US Army for the Launched Effects–Short Range (LE-SR) program.
- Raker, an ISR drone with 16 hours of endurance and an over-600-mile range.
Those platforms (among others), judging by yesterday’s Q2 report, are pretty popular: Aevex generated about $202M in revenue last quarter—up almost 100 percent from last year—including an $88M Pentagon contract for “long-range precision strike systems” last month (we’re guessing this was for Disruptor).
Sea legs: All those drone dollars have given Aevex some money to spend on acquisitions, and like everyone else, they’re looking to get their sea legs, and BlackSea fits the bill (at, like, a fraction of the cost of some other big names in the cash-flush maritime autonomy world).
Here’s what they’re getting by adding the Baltimore-based USV company to their team:
- Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (GARC): A 16-foot USV (you’ve definitely seen it) designed for ISR, autonomy, and distributed maritime ops. The company is on a contract worth up to $213M with the Navy to deliver about 30 of these a month.
- NightTrain: An autonomous logistics vessel built to move ISO containers and supplies directly to not-so-easy-to-access shorelines without ports or cranes.
- Chaser: Basically a combat-capable GARC (aka GARC 2.0), designed to fit inside a 20-foot shipping container. BlackSea says Chaser has a larger payload capacity than GARC and can do everything from ISR to the go-boom stuff.
- Comet: A larger USV (43 feet) with top speeds of 45 knots and a 10,000-pound payload capacity. The company says it can do everything from air defense to anti-submarine warfare, counter-UAS, EW, and more. Get you one (bigger) boat that can do it all.
Aevex is also planning to bring at least a few of those USVs into its CompassX autonomous navigation and C2 system to enable “multi‑domain coordination, assured navigation in GPS‑denied environments, and rapid payload integration across air and maritime systems.”
Cash money: Along with the tech itself, the deal also brings over all of BlackSea’s contracts to Aevex, and that ain’t nothing.
According to Aevex, BlackSea is set to generate $150M in revenue this fiscal year, and bringing them into the fold “is expected to bring multi‑year contract visibility, supporting an expectation of above-market growth in FY 2027 and beyond.”
- To date, BlackSea has delivered over 320 USVs out of its 57,000‑square‑foot manufacturing facility. Aevex says it’ll ramp production at that facility to about 40 USVs a month.
“This is exactly the kind of acquisition that aligns with our strategic priorities,” Aevex CEO Roger Wells said in a statement. “Together, we intend to create one of the largest pure‑play multi‑domain autonomous systems providers, delivering effects to the battlefield across air, surface, and subsea domains.”
For BlackSea, “AEVEX brings the scale, manufacturing depth, and autonomy ecosystem needed to accelerate everything we’ve built,” CEO Bob Pudney added. “Our mission stays the same; our ability to deliver it grows.”
What do they say about a rising tide?
