Booz Allen to Buy Ultra Mission Solutions for $720 Million
The defense-technology firm will fold Ultra’s encryption and edge-compute products into its AI-driven battle-management portfolio.
Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) agreed to acquire the Ultra I&C Mission Solutions business from the Cobham Ultra Group, an Advent portfolio company, for $720 million in an asset purchase.
The deal is a second step in a short window of defense-technology buying by the McLean, Virginia, firm. It will add Ultra Mission Solutions’ mission-critical software, encryption, and edge-compute products to Booz Allen’s existing AI-driven battle-management, resilient-communications, and edge-infrastructure stack, including the Modular Detachment Kit, EdgeXtend, and Sit(x).
Chairman and CEO Horacio Rozanski said the acquisition “accelerates our ability to expand and scale our defense tech products and help the United States and its allies maintain decisive advantage on the battlefield.”
Ultra Mission Solutions, headquartered in Austin, Texas, operates across three lines of business—Mission Software, Edge Compute, and Encryption Management. Its products, including Apex, ADSI, ACTS, Rain, and Knox, unify command and control, edge compute, secure data movement, and encryption into a modular architecture designed for contested or disconnected environments. The company employs about 220 people, including roughly 135 specialized engineers, across five U.S. facilities.
Booz Allen said the combination is aimed at contested and fast-moving operational environments, where commercial technologies are increasingly central to warfighting. Ultra’s stack is intended to plug into Booz Allen’s edge and communications products so the combined portfolio can field commercial-grade systems for national-security missions at greater speed and scale.
Advent has invested more than $15 billion in enterprise value across the global defense sector since 2020, including Cobham, Ultra Electronics, Vantor, and Attalon. Booz Allen retained Jefferies as exclusive financial advisor, PwC as accounting and tax advisor, King & Spalding as legal advisor, and Renaissance Strategic Advisors as strategic industry advisor. Ultra Mission Solutions and Advent retained Baird, KPMG, and Latham & Watkins.
The company did not state a premium, an expected close date, or whether the purchase will be funded with cash, debt, or stock. The asset-purchase structure leaves the rest of Cobham Ultra’s operations with Advent.