BlueHalo

BlueHalo was built in 2019 as a purpose-made defense technology platform by Arlington Capital Partners, a private equity firm that assembled it by acquiring and combining a set of smaller specialty companies rather than growing a single product line organically. That structure gave BlueHalo an unusually wide starting portfolio for a company its age, spanning space technology, counter-drone systems, directed energy weapons, electronic warfare, cyber, and artificial intelligence, and the company has continued adding capabilities like uncrewed underwater vehicles since then. Directed energy has become BlueHalo's most publicized business. Its LOCUST laser weapon system was, by the company's account, the first directed energy weapon of its kind to be operationally fielded, combining broadband detection, an electronic warfare standoff capability, and a scalable high-energy laser that can physically destroy a drone rather than just jamming it.

BlueHalo has paired that laser work with radar partners on live-fire demonstrations, including a joint test with Leonardo DRS that mounted a counter-UAS directed energy system on a Stryker combat vehicle and shot down drones in flight, a combination meant to show how detection and a hard-kill laser effector can work together on a single vehicle. On the counter-UAS side that does not involve a laser, BlueHalo's Titan and Titan-SV systems handle radio frequency detection and precision tracking of small drones, with Titan able to force a drone toward a safe landing without disrupting the radio spectrum around it, and the company says it has delivered its thousandth Titan-family system. VigilantHalo extends that sensing picture further and has been demonstrated at US Central Command exercises like Desert Guardian, reflecting the heavy demand from Middle East commands facing persistent drone threats. In space, BlueHalo won a multi-billion dollar Space Force contract for BADGER, an adaptive phased array program meant to modernize how the service tracks and communicates with objects in orbit, building on the company's broader space technology work in ground systems and payloads.

Cyber and electronic warfare round out the portfolio, though directed energy, counter-UAS, and space have drawn the most public attention and contract dollars. BlueHalo's ownership changed in 2025, when AeroVironment agreed to acquire it in an all-stock transaction valued at roughly 4.1 billion dollars, a deal that closed in May 2025 and folded BlueHalo into AeroVironment's new Space, Cyber and Directed Energy segment. AeroVironment is itself a publicly traded company on Nasdaq, and BlueHalo now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary rather than an independent, private equity-backed firm, though it continues to compete for contracts under its own name across its original mission areas.