The private equity firm Highlander Partners on Tuesday said it has acquired Black Sage Technologies, a developer and provider of counter-drone solutions that are vendor agnostic and are designed for defense and critical infrastructure security applications.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Highlander acquired Black Sage from another private equity firm, Acorn Growth Companies, which bought the Idaho-based counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) company in 2019.
Highlander in 2022 established its High Point Aerotechnologies holding company to focus expertise on building out a platform in the UAS and C-UAS areas. Highlander followed up in November with the acquisition of Liteye Systems, a counter-drone company that integrates third-party solutions and also provides its own SHIELD system to detect, track, classify and defeat UAS threats.
Black Sage’s key C-UAS capability is its DefenseOS command and control software that integrates more than 40 sensor and effector systems and also layers in artificial intelligence and machine learning for automated target recognition and threat evaluation.
“Black Sage has solidified a leadership role in the emerging C-UAS category,” Jeff Hull, president and CEO of Highlander, said in a statement. “Its integrated solutions, driven by their highly advanced DefenseOS software, provide a differentiated solution to the market.”
The Army’s Joint Counter-small UAS Office last fall recommended counter-small UAS solutions provided by five companies to the military services and combatant commands for consideration as contractor-owned, government-operated C-sUAS as a service (CaaS) to protect installations from drone threats.
Black Sage was one of the companies and Liteye’s SHIELD system was included as part of a solution provided by Science Applications International Corp. [SAIC]. The other companies are Anduril Industries, CACI International [CACI], and Rafael Systems Global Sustainment.
Highlander in January also acquired DZYNE Technologies, a developer and manufacturer of small UAS for the Defense Department and other agencies. Black Sage, DZYNE and Liteye all operate under High Point Aerotechnologies.