Mercury makes new security, electronic warfare acquisitions

Mercury Systems pays $46 million to acquire a pair of companies in the security and electronic warfare technology domains.

Mercury Systems said Thursday it has acquired The Athena Group and Syntonic Microwave for $46 million in cash combined to add new security and electronic warfare product offerings.

The transactions also bring to Mercury more of a presence among Defense Department research laboratories and the intelligence community, according to a company release.

This pair of deals represent the ninth and 10th acquisitions for Andover, Massachusetts-based Mercury in the past three years to build a diverse portfolio of electronic subsystems for military platforms.

Including Athena and Syntonic, Mercury has paid close to $700 million for acquisitions over that time as part of its push to be a second-tier defense electronics supplier.

Athena builds cryptographic and countermeasure products intended to secure military computing systems and enable them for missions involving artificial intelligence, mobile communications and cloud computing.

Syntonic makes frequency tuners and microwave converters for signals intelligence and electronic intelligence functions.