Analysis
Joby Aviation is acquiring Resonant Sciences, a Beavercreek, Ohio-based maker of radar, electronic-warfare and communications components for military aircraft, according to The Verge and Dayton Daily News:
- Deal value -- $500 million total.
- Structure -- $450 million in cash and $50 million in Joby equity.
- Timeline -- expected to close in 2027.
What Resonant brings
Resonant Sciences designs and builds radomes, antennas and communications equipment used in American military aircraft, and will become Joby's dedicated defense unit once the acquisition closes. The company brings more than 250 employees with specialized defense clearances, revenue that grew roughly 40% year over year to more than $100 million on a trailing-twelve-month basis, and high-teens adjusted EBITDA margins in recent periods. First-half 2026 bookings ran more than three times the same period a year earlier, with backlog more than doubling year over year.
Why Joby is buying instead of building
Joby's core business is certifying and commercializing piloted electric air taxis, a process that has repeatedly slipped industry-wide timelines. A dedicated defense unit gives Joby a second, faster-monetizing revenue line built on components the Pentagon already buys today, rather than waiting on air-taxi certification and initial commercial launch. It also mirrors the consolidation already playing out across the eVTOL sector -- Pulse covered Boeing's decision to sell Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid to rival Archer for an equity stake just a day earlier, leaving Archer and Joby as the two remaining independent eVTOL leaders of scale, both now explicitly building out defense revenue rather than betting solely on civilian air-taxi timelines.
The footprint and the fit
Combined with Joby's existing 768,000 square feet of Ohio facilities, Resonant's expanded campus gives the merged company roughly 1 million square feet of manufacturing, integration and testing space concentrated in the Dayton region -- a defense-industrial cluster that also hosts Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. That geographic concentration is a deliberate bet: proximity to existing defense customers and supply chains matters more for winning follow-on military contracts than it does for civilian air-taxi routes, which are more dependent on dense urban markets like New York or Los Angeles.
The competitive read
Archer's Boeing deal handed it an immediate, ready-made defense and drone business in Insitu, a longtime Navy supplier. Joby's answer is a smaller but faster-growing radar and communications specialist rather than a full aircraft platform -- a narrower slice of the defense-industrial base, but one with cleaner integration into Joby's existing airframe and avionics work. Neither company has fully proven that defense revenue can offset the capital intensity of eVTOL certification, but both are now hedging the same way: diversify into military-adjacent hardware while civilian air-taxi commercialization keeps slipping.
What to watch: whether Resonant's backlog growth holds once folded into a larger corporate structure, and whether Joby follows Archer in disclosing a specific defense revenue target for 2027.
