What the School That Trains Space Warfighters Has Built, and What Comes Next

<p>Space has been a contested domain for years. The doctrine, the training, and the culture needed to fight and win in it have been built, mostly quietly, at a squadron at Nellis Air Force Base. Most people who care about the Space Force have never heard of it. Most of the people shaping how space warfare is conducted today came through it.</p><p>This year, the 328th Weapons Squadron turns 30. Three decades after the Space Division was stood up at the Air Force Weapons School in 1996, the institution that started by teaching fighter pilots how to integrate space support into their missions now graduates the tactical and operational leaders who will contest the domain against peer adversaries. The transformation is real. And according to the officer commanding the 328th right now, it's far from finished.</p><p>In this episode of the Spacepower Podcast, SFA Founder and host Bill Woolf sits down with Lt. Col. Brian "Knuckles" Peterson, Commander of the 328th Weapons Squadron, to talk about what the space weapons officer community has built, where it's going, and what the next 30 years demand.</p><p>In this conversation, Lt. Col. Peterson discusses:</p><ul><li>Why the 328th is a domain WIC, not a platform WIC, and why that distinction changes everything about how space warfighters are trained</li><li>What it means to graduate 450 weapons officers over 30 years in a service that still needs to double in size</li><li>How the course evolved from space support integration to full orbital warfare and EW combined arms, and why that shift wasn't just curriculum, it was culture</li><li>The debrief culture that distinguishes weapons officers: why failure is designed into the course, and what that teaches about decision-making under real-world pressure</li><li>The feedback loop between operators, testers, and acquirers, and why building the widget before figuring out how to fight it is one of the Space Force's cardinal sins</li><li>What it looks like when a Guardian truly understands the joint force, and why that connection is the foundation of everything the 328th produces</li><li>Why the school is expanding: a new building, an intelligence course, a cyber course, and what that signals about where the Space Force is heading</li><li>What the 30th anniversary Reblu is actually for, and why reconnecting 450 graduates matters as much as the classified combat updates on day one</li><li>What the 328th needs to keep producing to ensure the Space Force wins the fights that are