York Space hits milestone with largest satellite delivery yet

WASHINGTON — York Space Systems’ recent delivery of 21 satellites for the U.S. military marks the company’s largest batch to date, a milestone its chief executive says reflects years of investment in scaling up production for constellation-level programs.

The satellites, launched Sept. 10, are the first plane of the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 1 Transport Layer, part of the Pentagon’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The network is designed as a backbone for military data transport and missile-warning missions.

“We’ve delivered constellations before” but none as visible as SDA’s program, the company’s CEO Dirk Wallinger said in an interview. York’s largest delivery previously had been nine spacecraft for Tranche 0 of the PWSA which launched in April 2023.

“We are pretty much retired from scaling up production at this point,” said Wallinger. York’s expansion has been underway for years. Founded in 2015, the Denver-based company added a second factory to keep pace with SDA contracts and commercial orders. Wallinger said both sites are now in “rapid production mode.”

“We were lucky enough that SDA and then other customers worked with us pretty early on, with some of these contracts five, six years ago,” he said. “And so now we’re in the position that we’ve been scaling up production for five or six years.”

That head start, he added, is a “little bit of a differentiator” that Wallinger said gives York an edge against newer industry players that are now building out factories and standardized satellite buses. “A lot of new entrants have yet to get contracts and then have to scale that production as well,” he said. “I can attest that it’s a big challenge.”

Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman also have contracts for Tranche 1 Transport Layer spacecraft, but York was first to orbit with its batch. The company is now producing for three different SDA constellations.

The Tranche 1 Transport Layer contract worth $382 million was for 42 satellites; the first 21 are in orbit and the second 21 are slated to launch by year-end.

York is producing 12 satellites under the $200 million Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) contract. It also is under contract to make 10 satellites for Tranche 2 Transport Layer Gamma, and 62 satellites for Tranche 2 Transport Layer Alpha.

Wallinger said York has sharply cut cycle times. “We went from eight months production for a single bird to, by the end of the plane, we were able to make a satellite within weeks.”

Golden Dome in sight

The Pentagon’s next-generation missile defense program, Golden Dome, looms as an opportunity, said Wallinger. 

Estimated at $175 billion, the program is aimed at protecting the U.S. from advanced missile threats and has become a top priority of the Trump administration. 

The PWSA provides the foundational architecture for Golden Dome’s space component: the Transport Layer carries secure data across the network, the Tracking Layer hosts sensors to spot missile launches, and a planned Custody Layer would maintain persistent watch over adversary sites and mobile targets.

York has positioned its Dragoon experimental satellite, built under T1DES, as a proof point. Dragoon, launched in June, was designed to test secure connectivity for targeting, missile warning and missile tracking.

“Hopefully there’s a lot of synergies there,” Wallinger said. The administration wants something deployed by 2028, “so it seems like we should be taking advantage of things that we’ve already accomplished, and seeing how we can apply them to meet new threats.”