The world’s largest arms manufacturer is to pay $3.45 billion for Ultra Maritime, the British undersea warfare specialist created from the 2022 merger of two of the UK’s best-known defence companies.
Lockheed Martin, the American defence giant, said the acquisition would strengthen its hand in “advanced undersea warfare” at a time when the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to drive unprecedented demand for new weapons and military technology.
Ultra Maritime forms part of Cobham Ultra, the group assembled by Advent International, the American private equity firm, when it combined Cobham, the British aerospace pioneer, with domestic rival Ultra Electronics four years ago. Advent paid £4 billion for Cobham in 2019 and a further £2.6 billion for Ultra in 2022. Both deals proved contentious given the companies’ importance to national security, and each required government approval under the UK’s foreign investment screening regime. The transaction is the latest in a long line of foreign private equity swoops on British firms that have reshaped the UK’s industrial base over the past decade.
Ultra Maritime specialises in undersea military technologies, including sonobuoys, which detect submarines, and torpedo nose arrays that use sonar to track their targets. The company, which retains factories and offices in London, Buckinghamshire and Dorset, won a contract this year to supply its underwater acoustic decoys, designed to protect ships and submarines from torpedoes, to the US Navy. The Royal Navy is also among its principal customers.
Lockheed Martin will fold Ultra Maritime into its rotary and mission systems (RMS) business, which reported revenue of $17.3 billion last year and employs 35,000 people worldwide. Lockheed itself has 1,700 staff in the UK across roughly 20 sites, including operations in Bedfordshire, Hampshire and Glasgow.
“Undersea superiority belongs to those who move fastest and work together best,” said Stephanie Hill, president of Lockheed’s RMS division, announcing the deal. “By joining forces with Ultra Maritime, we’re accelerating our commitment to deliver the most advanced undersea and anti-submarine warfare capabilities to our US and allied partners across the globe.”
Shonnel Malani, managing partner at Advent, said Ultra had become a “stronger, more innovative partner to allied navies” under the private equity firm’s ownership, “with improved execution, greater industrial capacity and next-generation autonomous solutions that position it well for future warfare”.
Advent is understood to have invested about £127 million in Ultra Maritime over the past three years to accelerate production. The business turned over roughly £370 million in 2023 but is on track to deliver revenues closer to £587 million this year, the Financial Times reported last week.
The defence industry has been a clear beneficiary of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as President Trump’s demands that Nato members, the UK included, dramatically increase their defence budgets, a shift that has prompted Britain to boost its own domestic weapons production. In response, contractors have raced to broaden their product offering, and industry analysts said Lockheed’s move for Ultra Maritime is firmly part of that trend. Whether the wave of consolidation delivers lasting economic benefit for the UK, however, remains an open question.