Closing Bell - Manifest Space: York Space Systems CEO on Impact of Government Shutdown, Supply Chain Resilience and What’s Next for York 11/17/25

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Morgan Brennan sits down with Dirk Wallinger, York Space Systems founder and CEO, on the latest episode of Manifest Space. They discuss the rapid shift in the role space plays in national security—and why supply chain resiliency is more important then ever, plus York’s role as a prime contractor for the U.S. government and who wins the next era of commercial and defense space.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Now that the government shutdown is over, another space company is filing to go public. York Space Systems York is a prime contractor that makes and operates low-cost satellites for both government and commercial customers. In September, it delivered its largest batch of satellites to date to the U.S. military, tranche one of the transport layer, which will help create a network for military data and missile warning missions. I recently spoke with founder and CEO, Dirk Wallinger, during the government shutdown, before the company's IPO filing, and I asked what investors need to understand

about York and about the industry overall. With moving from billion-dollar satellites that take a decade to hundreds and thousands of satellites being delivered really quickly, what it requires is a strong industrial base and a strong supply chain. York has a good supply chain and we buy from a lot of different folks,

but those folks also sell to our competitors as well. So when you're looking at solid investments, it's typically who is in the supply chain that is providing to a lot of different primes and offering a lot of different capability to everyone, because that's fundamental. That's required not only for the prime contractors, but it's required for the United States government

and commercial customers as well. The company reported a 59% jump in revenue for the first nine months of 2025, and its net loss narrowed from the same period a year earlier. York Space Systems is majority owned by PE firm A.E. Industrial, whose other portfolio companies include Firefly Aerospace and Redwire. We just want to be the most successful and most ruthlessly efficient prime there is out there.

On this episode, York's Dirk Wallinger, on the impact of the government shutdown, on supply chain resilience, and on what is next for the company. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. York is what's called a prime contractor. So we execute satellite missions on behalf of government and commercial customers as well, providing really a turnkey solution. So to the customer, it's a complete solution that York's providing. And we've provided for a wide variety of missions, whether that's Earth observation, remote proximity operations, communications,

whatever the customer needs, we go out, find those solutions, deploy them, put them in orbit. Sometimes we operate them for the customer, and sometimes they take over operational ownership. Yeah. And you had a pretty high-profile delivery of satellites that have been launched for the U.S. government as well on the national security side, too. Part of what's the transport layer as being killed. That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's exciting. You know, the government is moving from, you know, what used to be large, billion-dollar satellites kind of executed over decades. They're moving that entire architecture to what's called the proliferated warfighter space architecture. So instead of one gigantic billion, multi-billion dollar satellite, we're putting up hundreds and thousands of satellites.

We're doing that much more frequently, you know, kind of in the cadence of every two or three years. And so that constellation that you're talking about was the first operational system for this brand new architecture. And so we were very proud to be a part of that and put that up. And, you know, we can't say too much about what it's doing, but we can't say that it's healthy and operating as expected so far. So we're really excited.

How does it speak, though, and I realize that you're limited in what you can say, but how does it speak to the role of space increasingly as a warfighting domain and the future as warfare on the battlefield in general changes? Yeah, I mean, you know, throughout history, we've seen kind of things move up in layers, I guess, you know, from kind of ground communications to then, you know, to air, the battle in air. And I think space is the obvious next kind of evolution of that, right? I mean, the reality is that conflict is now global.

It's not just fought in your backyard. It's fought throughout the world. And space obviously makes the most sense for where our communications and where our systems need to operate and coordinate from because it's intrinsically, right, global. Space is intrinsically a global system. And so it makes a lot of sense that kind of that's where things are moving. And that's where the ecosystem is headed.

And so there's a lot of excitement in the investment community, but then also, you know, across the globe for that everyone's realizing that space is really the next evolution. How has the government shutdown impacted you? You know, we'd love it to get started again. I think that, you know, as far as our adversaries and what they're doing, that's not changing a lot. As far as they're not stopping. So we are a little bit. York is in a good position, though. We're able to execute. our missions. We have lots of contracts with the government right now, and so we're able to continue to execute on that. Production floor is very busy. None of that has stopped, so we're continuing to push forward. But obviously, kind of new technologies and new developments are on hold while we're in the shutdown. So, you know, we'd love to see it get going again, but luckily we have

lots of work and lots of production down on the floor to get through. When you talk about new technologies and new developments, does Golden Dome fit into that category? It does. It does. Obviously, that's a big development supported by, you know, Congress and the administration. There's a lot of funds there, which have created a lot of excitement for people. I think that we, given that we've been able to kind of put up so many different solutions into orbit, we've proven that they've worked. We've been able to personally kind of ramp up our own production. I think that that is what the government needs right now to deliver on that solution. There's a lot of dollars there, but the timeline is very short. They want this system up and proving capabilities by 2028, which we're basically

in 2026 now, right? So anything that's kind of starting from scratch probably is not going to meet that deadline. And so we're in a position where we've delivered real solutions. We've shown production at scale. We've shown our solutions work in orbit. So those are all things that I think people are looking for to make this mission of success. Yeah. 2028 is basically right around the It is. How quickly can you produce and make a satellite? Well, so that is starting to evolve as well. So, you know, our first satellites, you know, which we put into orbit probably, I think,

about three years ago now, they were about eight months from the time that we received all the hardware until the time the first unit was done. But now we're at a scale where when we start on, you know, kind of a production run, the final part of that, you know, it might be six, seven months for the first unit. first unit, but by the end, you're looking at a number of weeks. So technology is evolving very quickly, and this isn't, you know, on the 100th unit, by the 20th unit or by the 40th unit, you've reduced that time from, you know, eight or nine months to one. And so that's the kind of cadence that the government's going to need to see, particularly, you know, Golden Dome is

you're talking hundreds and thousands of satellites that need to be deployed, standing up production. And this environment is, I can say, not an easy task. So it's been years of work to get to this point to be able to deliver that kind of cadence. So it is exciting, but it is challenging. The United States needs to step up our ability to produce and produce quickly if we're going to meet our adversaries. How much is AI and automation driving how quickly you can ramp production? It's automation for sure. We're implementing that, you know, definitely today. That is a capability that must be there to kind of speed up production. You know, one of these satellites, you know, if you're doing testing on it

by hand, it can literally take weeks for a single satellite. Then you multiply that by tens and hundreds, right? It means that you're not going to be able to test all the systems in the time frame that you need. So luckily, we've invested heavily in automation. And a lot of the systems now are where, you know, a technician with a little bit of training can kind of push a button and test the entire satellite and they can do this, you know, whether we're in the office or not in the office, test all those systems. So automation is a critical piece of what we're doing, and it's definitely required for production today.

AI is a little different. I'm probably dating myself a little bit, but the old Terminator movies with Skynet kind of brings a little bit of reticence when it comes to full automation in orbit using AI, so we're very cautious about how we're approaching that. I do think there's applications for it, particularly in how we run the business.

So when it comes to functions like HR, legal, it can really help a lot and it can help our teams there. It won't be a full replacement for any of our team, but it helps them kind of perform more, be more, and be better as well. We are applying it. We're starting to dabble a little bit in how it can help some of our teams like engineering or program management where a lot of that function is trying to find information, right? And so AI is very helpful there as well. We're not quite to the point where we feel comfortable putting it on the systems themselves. How would you categorize the competitive landscape right now, especially as we have seen not only established players like York and some of the defense primes,

but we also seen this proliferation of satellite startups and folks that are, for example, commoditizing satellite buses? Yeah, I mean, look, you know, the reality is there's a large defense. budget. Golden Dome is exciting as well. And so whenever you kind of see these large amounts of dollars, right, there tends to be a lot of excitement. And it tends to get a little bit harder to kind of, you know, separate the wheat from the shaft. And so there's a lot of kind of hyperbole in the segment about what can be done and what can't be done. And I've seen these kind of cycles play out before, right? So in the 2015 timeframe, you know, there was a lot of funding, a lot of

venture that went into kind of asteroid mining and things like that. And the reality is like the technology just weren't there. And we don't see a lot of asteroid mining happening today, right? And so you kind of had that. And then, you know, 2018, 2020, you had a second kind of wave of investment hit the market with a lot of promises. And so a lot of that ended up being SPACs. And so we saw that as well.

And so we're kind of seeing something similar where there's a lot of dollars there. So there's a lot of promises being made. But the reality is that a lot of these folks have not executed actual DOD missions for the customer before. And that's a challenge. The government has legacy systems that have been around for decades. And so, yes, we want to progress technology. We want to deliver new capabilities to the United States. But if they don't work with the investment that the government has already spent, you know,

hundreds of billions of dollars on over the past decades, then you're not going to have a complete ecosystem and we're not going to be able to meet our adversary. So I think that's the challenge is really kind of trying to separate, you know, what is hyperbole, what is exaggeration on capabilities and what is true capabilities. You know, the reality is if you haven't delivered a system to orbit yet, saying that you're going to be able to build a thousand in a couple of years is probably a little bit more than optimistic. Gotcha.

In light of that, I guess what do you think investors need to know or understand about what it is to invest in commercial space, whether it's in private markets or in public markets? Yeah, I mean, moving from billion-dollar satellites that take a decade to hundreds and thousands of satellites being delivered really quickly, what it requires is a strong industrial base and a strong supply chain. And so I can say that York and where we fit, we invest heavily in our supply chain. So we have critical partners who we absolutely must be partnered very, you know, very well with. We have to help them stand up their production, have to help them kind of make sure that their supply chain is. secure as well. So when I'm talking to investors or people of private equity or things that we do on our own, we're typically investing in the supply chain, right? And that's going to be a good

investment. That's required no matter who you're working with. So yes, you know, York has a good supply chain and we buy from a lot of different folks, but those folks also sell to our competitors as well. So when you're looking at solid investments, it's typically who is in the supply chain that is providing to a lot of different primes and offering a lot of different capability to everyone, because that's fundamental. That's required not only for the prime contractors, but it's required for the United States government and commercial customers as well. So I tend to encourage investment in things that are critical. So if you're talking about mining, you know, mining for gold back in the day, right, it's the picks and the shovels. That's where the best investment is going to be is the

picks in the shovels. Yeah, that's a key insight right there. I am curious with so much focus from a policy's perspective here in the US, and you could argue among allies to a certain extent as well, whether you think that supply chain is going to become more resilient. There's been so much talk over the years about it and about it being fragile. Yeah, I'm kind of the counter on that. I mean, supply chain is extremely important.

You've heard me say that, but our supply chain is pretty resilient. We've invested in it. So, you know, we deployed a constellation, you know, three years ago, and at that time, supply chain was indeed fragile. But at this point, we know what the government needs. We know the solutions that they need to deliver in orbit. And so over the past, you know, kind of three to five years, we've been investing in that supply chain. So now we have a multitude of providers who can make laser communications.

We know that that is going to be a need in the future, right? And so we've worked with them cooperatively to stand up, invest that. production. We've made bulk orders ahead of needs so that they could be assured that, look, we're not going to order 100 now. And then, you know, you'll never hear from us for, you know, five years to come, right? Like, that's not how you create a healthy supply chain. You want to invest in them. You want them to know that you're going to be around. And so we've done a lot of that. So I think, you know, I wouldn't say that, you know, everyone saying that supply chain is, is, you know, very weak at the moment in the U.S. I don't think that's completely true. I think there

are companies who are very strong, who are providing a capability, and people have been building at scale for years now, know who those providers are, and they've worked with them. So I think it's a problem that is certainly being overcome. I don't think that we need to continue to beat the drum of it being super weak or fragile. I don't believe that that's the case. Are you acquisitive here? I mean, we've seen some M&A and some deal-making happening across the space sector. How are you thinking about it? We're kind of a, we're a mix of, you know, we do a little bit of vertical integration where we think that there is something that we can add, where we can actually contribute to that supplier. And so we are looking at inorganic growth all the time. That's

something that we continue to evaluate. But we don't want to completely vertically integrate everything. I think, you know, if you look to car manufacturing in the 80s where basically everyone just worked for the big three, that wasn't really healthy. from a technology development standpoint, right? I mean, the reality is those cars became inferior, which is why they were so able to be challenged by the Japanese, the Toyotas and the Hondas, who kind of entered the U.S. market, was they had better technology and better capabilities and better quality.

So we're more of a mix. We'll vertically integrate or do inorganic growth where we think that we can actually contribute something and help to advance the technology where it needs to be done. But we do like a healthy kind of market and ecosystem, for most of the things because competition is really what brings technology forward. You know, sole sourcing or having only one supplier for one thing isn't really healthy. Competition is what drives technology forward.

And I realize in some ways to bring this full circle, I realize we have a government shut down afoot right now and that's affecting all kinds of things, including the IPO market. Is there, that said, is there a world in which York space systems could go public? Yeah, I mean, we're always evaluating all the options. I mean, obviously there's a benefit to being a private company. We can kind of pursue what we need and what we want and do it aggressively without really, you know, needing to respond to the public markets. But all that said, you know, public companies are able to raise capital. They're able to be kind of, they're more center point as far as people are more familiar with what they're doing broadly.

And so that's very helpful too. So I think there is a world where that can happen. But we're, you know, we're just evaluating all our options. We just want to be the most successful and most ruthlessly efficient prime there is out there. Yeah, and all doing so while we close in on a month here for a government shutdown. Yeah, I think it's, is this the second longest one ever? You know, it's definitely, it's been a little bit. We'd like to see it moving again.

I don't think it's really, you know, don't want to get too political, but I don't think it's healthy for the industrial base. I could say that for sure. You know, everyone would be excited to get moving on the budget. And like I said, our adversaries are not stopping. So it's a really bad time for us to be stopping as far as technology development goes. Dirk Wallinger of York Space Systems. Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts. And by watching our coverage on Closing Bell overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.