AUSA: Redwire Co-President & CGO Josh Stinson

Josh Dinson joins us now here on the ground at AUSA 2026. He is the co-president and Chief Growth Officer at Redwire. Thanks for having us. Good to see you.

Thank you for having me. Good to be here.

There's enormous attention, understandably so, on the role of military drones right now. Active conversation we're having here at AUSA as well as back on Wall Street. What do you think investors might be missing about this particular opportunity?

And how do you feel Redwire is uniquely positioned to capture?

Well, I think the the important thing to note is Redwire has been in this business for quite some time. Right? So on our Stalker platform that we have here, we delivered that to the uh Department of Defense in 2006.

Not the same one you see today, but it's been through a lot of iterations. And that's the same thing is that uh, you know, you have some organizations out there, so this is kind of new companies come up and spring up because there's a lot of opportunity based on what you're saying right here. But we've been in this business for quite some time. And then through that process, you learn what's uh in different environments.

You modify your aircraft to operate in like hot weather, cold weather, uh contested environments that we're seeing in Ukraine and things of that nature. So that's been a a a constant iteration of process and improvements, right? So, so that's what we've been kind of going over and I think that's kind of what a lot of people are missing today in today's market.

When military customers go about selecting a drone and components for their own drone warfare, what are the considerations that matter much more than simply the price tag?

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I can say that from a background, former military, former army guy, uh, you know, understanding their needs and their requirements. Obviously, what I think the customer needs the most is reliability, right? That uh, that capability matches what you actually said that it was able to do and to help them fulfill that mission. So that's one and most kind of key foremost the the thing we have a foundational agreement with our organization and a culture we push around is reliability.

Then the next thing is, you know, for our customers, endurance, uh, then also the different capabilities that you add in there. Now the the changing landscape in the battle space, it is constantly evolving, right? So we notice that it's vertical takeoff and landing, some other capabilities, lethality. Now, that's another aspect that we uh started integrating for a lot of our customers because that's key, right? So, and we've been seeing that in Ukraine, right? So, so those are kind of the key capabilities that we try to integrate with our capability and deliver to our customer to fulfill their mission.

And delivering to the customer and fulfilling that mission needs to be done at scale, which is much easier said than done. How does Redwire prepare to manufacture and deliver at scale,

really the the military hardware customers actually need?

Yeah. Well, the, you know, we've we've invested in manufacturing, so we have a 100,000 square foot facility in San Louis Obispo, California. We have currently a 68,000 square foot facility in Huntsville, Alabama. We're increasing that to 164,000 square foot. We also have 85,000 square foot in Ann Arbor. So that helps our scale, our capacity to produce.

The other aspect too is we have about 105,000 square foot facility in Riga, Latvia. So that footprint in the EU also helps us support our EU customers, our EU partners, but also capacity to expand across the board. So that is the way we can manufacture these at scale and meet our customers' demand.

I'm interested in the Eurozone component a little bit more because you mentioned Ukraine. How do Redwire's European manufacturing presence and experience supporting Ukraine, really position the company for growth in the broader European arena?

Yeah, great question. Obviously, that we've all seen in the today's media is the dynamic environment in Ukraine. Highly contested environment, a lot of new things that have been thrown at us by our adversary. Our footprint there, our delivery of capability. We've delivered now about 300 of our Penguin UAS aircraft, a little over that. And then what worked maybe two weeks ago doesn't work today, right? So it's that another thing that we'd highlighted earlier, constant iteration and improvement of the capability to continue to operate in such a contested environment.

I'm grateful for the context and I'm grateful for the time. Josh Dinson at Redwire. Thanks a lot for having us.

Thank you. Appreciate it.