York Space Systems has closed its acquisition of satcom terminal company All.Space, in a move both company CEOs say will create a complete tactical satcom ecosystem.
York Space Systems announced Wednesday the acquisition, which was announced in late April, has closed. The total purchase price dropped from $355 million when it was first announced to $300 million at deal close. This consisted of approximately $155 million in cash and 5.9 million shares of York common stock.
For York Space Systems, which builds spacecraft that provide tactical capabilities for the warfighter in theater, acquiring a satellite terminal developer broadens the company’s ecosystem, York CEO Dirk Wallinger told Via Satellite in a recent interview.
“[All.Space] is the leader in providing tactical communications and other capabilities in denied environments. Their ESA design is particularly resilient. We wanted to complete that ecosystem, so that All.Space and York together could combine robust, resilient communications capabilities in theater to the warfighter,” Wallinger says.
All.Space CEO Paul McCarter says that York Space’s leadership “understands the depth” of the company’s capabilities and what it means for military satcom.
All.Space has developed optical beam-forming technology that enables its terminals to connect with multiple satellites in multiple orbits, simultaneously. The company is also advancing toward a future product to connect across both Ku- and Ka-band satellite networks simultaneously and has completed proof-of-concept demonstrations toward this development.
“From a critical needs perspective, if you have the ability to connect to more than one satellite in more than one orbit, to more than one provider simultaneously, you have a distinct, unique selling point that is completely different,” McCarter told Via Satellite.
“It is a complete paradigm change for how you deliver all of this architecture into a system,” McCarter added. “You have immense, assured, resilient architecture that provides bandwidth and software architecture, which completely changes what you can do. That is hugely exciting for where we can go with this.”
Wallinger sees particular opportunity to provide command and control (C2) capabilities for the future increase in unmanned systems, which will need to be coordinated in the as large-scale fleets.
“York looks at the capabilities that the military is going to need in theater in the future. All of these unmanned systems are going to need to be coordinated in large-scale fleets,” Wallinger said. “We think that All.Space’s capabilities, with their robust tactical communication capabilities, [and] our constellations can be that command and control ecosystem that will enable these fleets to operate in the future.”
All.Space works with multiple satellite operators and constellations so its terminals can connect with multiple satellites in multiple orbits, simultaneously. It will continue to operate as a merchant supplier to the industry, as a wholly owned company of York Space Systems.
York will be an “anchor customer,” Wallinger said, with the ability to place orders and invest in its production capabilities.
All.Space, which was based in the U.K., formally relocated to the U.S. last month during the acquisition process, selecting Florence-Muscle Shoals, Alabama for a new technical and manufacturing hub.
“Congress has been very clear that they don’t want a single-source, stovepipe solution – it’s not good for the military, not good for the industry, and not good for investors. We hear the Pentagon, and that’s what we’re trying to do together here,” Wallinger said. “We know that we need to have a strong industrial base with a broad group of suppliers and multiple sources for the military.”
