ATL Partners buys Precise Metal Products to start an aerospace and defense roll-up

Antenna Research Associates (ARA), an OceanSound Partners portfolio company based in Laurel, Md., announced a merger on Thursday, Oct. 8, with Empower RF Systems, a developer and manufacturer of high-power solid-state RF and microwave amplifiers. ARA specializes in antennas and apertures engineered for size-, weight-, power- and cost-constrained environments. Empower RF's amplifier modules and systems cover HF through X-band for electronic warfare, counter-UAS, SATCOM, threat simulation and radar missions.¹

The deal arrived 16 days after ARA named Bill Gattle president and chief executive.^1–2 On Sept. 22, Gattle said ARA would add capability "such as the power and networking content that surrounds the antenna." The goal, he said, was "a single partner that can take a customer from antenna to amplifier to network."² Announcing the merger, Gattle said that in contested spectrum, "power and aperture cannot be engineered in isolation."¹

Gattle spent 35 years at Harris and its successor, L3Harris Technologies, most recently as president of Space and Intelligence Systems. As chief executive of LightRidge, he led the 2025 sale of its Geost business to Rocket Lab.²

OceanSound invested in ARA in 2024 and set out to build "a more complete, more integrated RF portfolio," partner Ted Shanahan said in September.² On Oct. 5, three days before the merger announcement, IMSAR, a separate company outside the merger, announced it had completed a strategic investment from OceanSound.^{1, 3} The Springville, Utah, company makes low size, weight and power synthetic aperture radar payloads for unmanned and manned aircraft. It intends to broaden from radar toward multi-mission RF sensing, partly through acquisitions.³

Space Systems Command (SSC) awarded Viasat a competitive indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the Space Data Network Backbone’s Mission Operations Center, the command announced Nov. 5, 2026. The contract carries a $450 million maximum ceiling and a $115 million initial task order to design, field and scale the center.¹

Viasat will serve as the network and mission system integration partner as SSC expands its open-architecture ecosystem across multiple space-segment providers. SSC plans to bring mission integration, network operations and data transport management together through the center.¹

The effort builds on the multi-vendor acquisition strategy demonstrated in the Space-Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio’s earlier Delivery Order 2 and Delivery Order 3 work. That work involved Amazon LEO for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and York Space Systems.¹

Breaking Defense reported that the center will serve as the network orchestration hub for the backbone, a low Earth orbit constellation being built by SpaceX. The network’s near-term focus will be supporting the Golden Dome missile defense initiative, the outlet reported.²

DefenseScoop reported that earlier this year the Department of War awarded SpaceX a $2.3 billion contract to deliver a fully operational backbone prototype by the end of 2027.³