Cobham

Cobham's story starts with Sir Alan Cobham, an aviation pioneer who founded Flight Refuelling Limited in 1934 after years of long-distance flying convinced him that aircraft needed a way to top off fuel in the air. His probe-and-drogue refueling method became the standard used by air forces around the world, and the company built on that base for decades, renaming itself Cobham plc in 1994 and growing into a genuinely diversified aerospace and defense electronics group. By the 2010s Cobham's businesses spanned aerial refueling pods, satellite communications terminals, antennas, avionics, life-support gear including diving rebreathers used by the US Navy, and advanced microelectronics for space and defense applications, sold to customers across dozens of countries. That history matters because it is largely just history now. In January 2020, US private equity firm Advent International bought Cobham plc for roughly 4 billion pounds in a deal that drew scrutiny from the UK government over the loss of a strategically important defense supplier to foreign ownership.

Advent's answer to critics was to keep pieces of Cobham running under UK jurisdiction, but its actual strategy since has been methodical disassembly. Cobham Mission Systems, the refueling and cargo-handling business, went to Eaton in 2021 for close to 2.8 billion dollars. Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions, the microelectronics arm serving space and radar customers including the US Navy's SPY-6 program, was sold to Honeywell in 2025. Cobham Aerospace Communications, covering antennas, satcom, and avionics, went to Thales in a deal that closed in 2024. Cobham Satcom, the maritime and land terminal business, was sold to private equity firm Solix in 2025.

Advent also merged what remained of Cobham with its other UK defense holding, Ultra Electronics, to form Cobham Ultra, and continued selling from there: Ultra Cyber went to Airbus Defence and Space in early 2026, and Ultra Maritime, the undersea warfare and sonar business, was sold to Lockheed Martin in mid-2026 for roughly 3.45 billion dollars. Taken together, the divestitures have generated well over 7 billion dollars in proceeds for Advent, comfortably clearing its original purchase price. What that leaves under the Cobham name today is not much. The businesses that made Cobham a recognizable name in defense electronics, refueling systems, and satellite communications now operate inside Eaton, Honeywell, Thales, Solix, Airbus, and Lockheed Martin, each running as part of a larger company's own portfolio rather than as Cobham. This listing exists to record that history accurately rather than to imply an active, standalone Cobham business persists at its former scale, since as of mid-2026 it effectively does not.