Lockheed completes Ultra Maritime acquisition, adding sonobuoys and towed sonar arrays

Aurelius, a private equity investor, completed its acquisition of Marshall Aerospace from Marshall Group on Thursday, Oct. 8.¹ Marshall Aerospace has supported the C-130 Hercules since 1966, and its work spans military maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), applied aerospace engineering and multi-domain advanced manufacturing.^1–2

The seller has been breaking itself up.^{3, 5–6} Marshall Group sold Slingsby Advanced Composites to Swedish buyer Mangohojden and, in November 2025, Marshall Land Systems to Canadian investment firm Flowing River Capital.^5–6 The Hill Group and Homes England completed their purchase of about 700 acres from the group, including Cambridge City Airport.⁴ With its engineering businesses and land holdings sold, Marshall Group says its focus is now an investment portfolio for its shareholders.³

Aurelius gets a business that supports operators ranging from the Royal Norwegian Air Force to the U.S. Marine Corps, and works with manufacturers including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Thales. Its recent contracts include a multi-year entry-into-service and sustainment agreement for 12 C-130J aircraft acquired by the Turkish Ministry of National Defence. Another is a 14-year Thales contract to produce sonar modules for the Royal Navy. Marshall Aerospace Chief Executive Bob Baxter said Aurelius has "the expertise and resources to back our next phase of growth."¹

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