Bill Woolf: Ask a space weapons officer what they would grab if the house were on fire. Lieutenant Colonel Knuckles Peterson. Welcome to the Space Power Podcast.

Brian Peterson: Hey Hippie, thank you very much for having me. It's an honor and a privilege.

Bill Woolf: I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. I know ⁓ firsthand how difficult it is to instruct at the weapon school, let alone be the commander. That I don't understand. So you're the commander of the 328th Weapon Squadron and you're doing some phenomenal work out there. Now just for our audience, just so they know, the best class to ever go through is this patch right here from O-1 Bravo and then here's the legacy pad from the 328th. And then of course I proudly display my I went through this school back in 2001, graduate 101, taught by instructors who would go on to wear stars. one of whom now leads the entire Space Force. This year, the school turns 30. It opened in 1996 as the Space Division at Nellis Air Force Base, and the job of the time helped fighters and bombers use space to do their missions. Three decades of a changing domain, a growing adversary, and a service that had to figure out what it means to fight in space have turned it into something else entirely. Weapons School Certificate behind me all the time just to keep reminding me about what it is you're producing there at the 328th.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, thanks, Hippie. I think most weapons officers carry that diploma around with them. It's the first thing, you know, keep your family, keep your dog, keep your money, and then your diploma makes it in for every PCS. So that's a big one for us.

Bill Woolf: Yes, sir. Hey, let's talk about your background because I mean, I want to hear the story and people want to hear the story. But you came up through missile warning, hundreds of hours supporting combat and commands, which we'll talk about three combat deployments. And that operational experience sits at the foundation of everything you're doing at the three twenty eighth. Walk us through how that shapes the way you see this mission.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, I think, you know, I was lucky to have a lot of good leaders, whether patches or not growing up, especially in the missile warning community. Some of the things that I feel the missile warning community instills in a lot of our younger guardians and it instilled it in me that we don't get in some of our missionaries. All of our missionaries are vitally important, but missile warning, think understanding the urgency.

Bill Woolf: and the answer is only half a joke. The family, the dog, the wallet, and then the diploma. Because earning the patch that comes with it is one of the most challenging things a guardian can do, and in three decades, fewer than five hundred people have ever pulled it off.

Brian Peterson: of our job, know, missile warning, there's very tight timelines, you're getting warning out to people so that they can be safe from adversary attacks, but also understanding that accuracy and attention to detail are critical. ⁓ You can't send out bad data. ⁓ Bad data quick is worse than ⁓ good data late. So I probably messed that analogy up. But at the end of the day, it's accuracy and urgency. ⁓ Also really learned appreciation is not even the right word, but the the necessity of understanding what the joint force does and how we contribute to that. And I know we talk a lot about mission space support versus space as a war fighting domain. Missile warning is really on the forefront of the space as a support element to the joint force. And I had some great leaders, some great DOs that really instilled in us the requirement to understand like, yes, you did X, Y, and Z. You released a missile and you met your timelines, but why does that?

Bill Woolf: Building that and keeping it sharp as the threat evolves is the work of the 328th Weapon Squadron and its commander, our guest, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Knuckles Peterson. I'm Bill Wolf, and this is Space Power. Here's what I want people to take away about weapons officers. It is not that they're the best operator in the room, and Knuckles is the first to say so. It's that they're the person to come to when the problem is hard and the fight has to be won. That is a whole idea behind the patch. So when you're on an island and don't know the answer, you have the training, the network, and the sheer stubbornness to go find it. That community is about to come together in a big way, as the 328th marks 30 years.

Brian Peterson: And as a young lieutenant, it was really ⁓ formative to be questioned by an O5 of like, you did this great thing. Why does it matter? Why does anyone care? And so being able to learn that at a young age and then come to weapon school immediately after that, first assignment really helped instill in me and has really guided how I approach things of hate the joint force and making sure that if we're doing a space support mission, we're never forgetting that we're doing it for the joint force.

Bill Woolf: Around 150 weapons officers, active duty and retired, will gather back at Nellis to reconnect and celebrate. None of that happens for free. And that cost isn't landing on the backs of our active duty guardians because sponsors stepped up to make it possible. To every one of them, thank you, especially True Anomaly, who in and of themselves, founded by a weapons officer, is taking space war fighting to the next level and creating capability to ensure freedom of action in the space domain.

Brian Peterson: And then as we've evolved to a war fighting domain and as especially here at the weapon school as we've altered our curriculum, ⁓ making sure that we don't lose sight that everything we do to gain space control and have space superiority is to support the joint force. ⁓ I know we've all heard the term space for spaces sake. Really those formative years was when I learned like, that doesn't don't do space for space sake. We're not just out here trying to do cool stuff. ⁓ At the end of the day,

Bill Woolf: They're our title sponsor for this event. You are investing in the community that keeps the country ahead in space. If you're listening and want to be part of a bigger mission, you don't need a patch to do it. The Space Force Association exists to tell this story and to build the support a young service needs to grow.

Brian Peterson: we're trying to open windows in the adversary ⁓ space surveillance network or trying to degrade their C5 ISRT to enable terrestrial missions or to enable maneuver that supports greater combatant command objectives.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, thank you for that. Speaking of which, I think everyone's got a story as it relates to going to the Weapons School. So let's start all the way back there. Why did you choose to go to the Weapons School and why are folks today choosing to go You can find us and find your own way in at USSFA.org. Space Power is produced by Ty Holiday. I'm Bill Wolf. We'll see you next time.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, so why I chose to go to the weapons school, a little bit of MacLennan for punishment. It actually starts when I was in college at my accession source, had a major there who was an F-16 pilot weapons officer. know, one of the first questions is, hey, what's that? What's that patch? It doesn't look like the rest. And he explained it and the way he explained it, you know, as a young 19, 20 year old kid made a lot of sense. It was very intriguing. He said, hey, this is, this is the patch. that you wear when you want people to come to you because you're going to solve their problems and you're going to be the guy who helps us win the fight. ⁓ And I really, when he explained it, you know, he really hinged on, hey, it's helping us win the fight. You're not, you're not the best guy in the world, but you, go to the weapons school and you gain a level of training and gain a level of experience and gain a community that when you're out on an island and you may not know the answer, you have the resources to go back and actually start solving problems. So that's a lot of like that intrigued me a lot plus just hey, I like to like a challenge. So that's a big portion of my why. I think a lot of our younger guardians when they think about coming to the weapons school, know, the Space Force today is not what it was when I was lieutenant. We have a lot of options now, right? Like if you wanted to do something advanced when I went through, it was really you go to weapons school. We didn't have a test pilot school component. So we actually, find myself talking with the test community, talking with the JFQC community or the C2 courses ⁓ as a, hey, I actually have competition now. And I don't view it as competition because at the end of the day, we're all necessary, right? We need testers, we need weapons officers. And so what I've seen with the students that are coming through now, like they are coming through the weapons school, not because... they solely want to challenge or not because they believe it gives them career progression, but because they understand that when we talk tactical and operational level of warfare, it's the weapons officers who have the experience and the training to lead at those levels. And that's what they want to do. They want to be space operators and leaders of space operators at the tactical and operational level. And that's why they're here. ⁓ And I think there's no better reason to want to be here. And if you, if you're not here for the right reasons, as you know, this is a very hard course. to stay through. And so we really are looking for the people who want to be here to progress the mission and are focused on mission accomplishment.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, thanks for that. I think it's going to help ⁓ folks understand and get a perspective about why they would want to go to the weapon school to your point. And speaking of which, there's probably a lot of folks out there. mean, one, Space Force is a small community. Two, weapons officers are even smaller in terms of the community that you're helping to create and that you're that we're both a part of. So let's talk about the ⁓ the trial by fire, if you will. You know, how long is the course? And, you know, when people are thinking about Weapon School, what are the questions you get asked the most as you go around or your instructors go around and talk about what the Weapon School is? ⁓ And what do you tell people when they're thinking about going to Weapon School?

Brian Peterson: Yeah, so it start off with just kind of the basics five and a half month course. And it's very much weapon schools and integration course at its, you know, at its core. You're going to show up to weapon school. You're going to go your own. You'll start your first week ⁓ with the entirety of the weapon school. So you'll be in a big auditorium with F-16 pilots, air battle managers, Intel professionals, cyber professionals, and you'll get baseline academics on joint integration. Then you'll come back over here and we start to put you kind of through our rigor. The way our course is designed, it's very much a crawl walk run. The first few weeks are a lot of academics and a lot of our missions or our scenarios that we put the students through, our 1V1 engagements, ⁓ 1V a few signals on one satellite if it's an electromagnetic warfare ⁓ scenario. And so it's very simple. And as we go through the course here in the space side, what you end up graduating kind of our space capstone. we call the Weapons School Distributed Operation Mission, where you're now going out to actual units and you are acting as the weapons officer. So we're forcing them to lead a group of people that they haven't been around, which is a shocking and ⁓ can definitely be ⁓ a molding experience. And so we do that. And then the scenario they're fighting is an OPLAN scenario. So it's... Mini v mini, it's multiple orbital regimes. You have to account for the space segment, the terrestrial segment, and the link segment. You're focused on ingesting combatant command objectives and LOEs and tasks, and then trying to decipher that and teach a crew of, this is what the combatant command wants. Here's how we're going to solve it. And then here's how we have to work with other units in a combined arms fashion. And so that's a lot of what the course is. ⁓ Then once you come back from that, we send you back over to the main weapon school for a month where you're doing a series of integrated exercises where now you're not with your ⁓ class that you've spent four and a half months with at that point. ⁓ It's you and an F-35 pilot and Intel pilot and various other platforms solving a mission. So we really stress the know yourself, know your own domain first ⁓ and then go out and integrate that domain. One of the biggest things that I think to help people understand what the Space Weapons Squadron does is contrary to a lot of the other WICs. ⁓ We are a domain WIC where they are a platform WIC. The 16th Weapons Squadron takes the best F-16 pilots in the world and makes them even better. I take an SDA expert, an OW expert, an EW expert, and I make them knowledgeable on all the mission areas, but then the real goal is to make them knowledgeable and give them an ability to problem solve, instruct, and then lead in a combined arms environment. So how does EW and OW work together? How do we battle manage? What does the comrade look like for different scenarios? And so those are the very high level skills that we're looking for to kind of produce out of the school. Some of the questions we really get asked are ⁓ it's along the line of what's the pace look like? What is it? Do I show up and immediately feet to the fire? ⁓ The standards are always high here, but we think one thing that's different from when you and I were students and then even a little bit when I was an instructor is we've really changed the culture. I and I think in a positive way to hold the students hands when we need to as we teach them new concepts. Hey, we're here to help. ⁓ It's less of a constant evaluator presence, but it's more of a hey, we're an instructor here to get you across the line. We've also instituted a lot of additional training. And so if a student hooks a ride, it's no longer, hey, you show up tomorrow at 7 a.m. to redo the ride. It's, you show up tomorrow at 7 a.m. We're gonna do a lot of additional training and then we'll have you redo the ride. So we've really taken a deliberate push to increase the education, increase the reps and sets for our students in an environment that invites failure, right? Like I want people to fail here. so that they one, learn what it feels like and how they react to it and how they can adapt to it. But then also how you then deal with that on the outside. ⁓ Trying to think through any of the other big questions we get. A lot of the questions we get are focused on, let's make the assumption I graduate weapons school. Am I going to deploy? Where do I look? What do I go to? What's my next assignment? One thing I always tell people in STARCOM S3TW is who manages our weapons officer billet plan. But as a weapons officer, you will more than likely deploy. It's not always a guarantee you will, but you will more than likely. The nice thing is that there are weapons officer specific billets that want to take a weapons officer and use the skillset that we've trained for. So it's not necessarily you're gonna get hooked and go be an aide at Aldoferra or an exec at Aldoferra. You're gonna go do a meaningful billet where you're actually doing the weapons officer job and utilizing your skillset. The other thing I like to tell people is especially for our officers, ⁓ your tier one assignment most likely going to be at a squadron. And then depending on how old you are, where you're at in your progression, your career as a guardian, you may be only be at that squadron for one or two years, and then you're going to fleet up to a tier two. The tier two positions are mostly our combatant commands. Here at the weapons school, all of my instructors are tier two positions. So the goal is to bring back the best of the best here, because that's how I can ensure I'm training credible humble and approachable weapons officers for the future. And then towards the end of your time, it's a five-year payback, you'll go to a tier three, which those are some of the more fuzzy positions. ⁓ You'll go to SSDP or a headquarter staff element. We also in our tier ones and tier twos put weapons officers in the NRO. So we believe that's a critical component right now. And we've been asked to look in S3TW. I know in their current bill of plan is looking at potentially adding TESs. and how the weapons officer community can work better with the test and really get that blue gray patch interaction where it makes sense. So that's some of the big questions on, hey, what do I do next? And a lot of it changes, right? Like we, think one of the biggest things you know, it's beautiful about our community is we're adaptable ⁓ and whatever the service needs and whatever the mission needs, like we will quickly try and adapt to that. Sorry, I know that was a long winded answer.

Bill Woolf: No, Knuckles, that was perfect. You covered a lot of ground there. I do want to pull the thread on a couple of things because I think it's important to emphasize. One, you said that you're teaching a domain versus a platform. talk a little bit about holistically what the weapon school does. And, you know, the Air Force Weapon School, as you say, has platform specific training based on the number of platforms assigned and really in support of air superiority mission sets. The space division, the 328th, is focused on the domain where the quote unquote platforms have to be trained across everybody so they understand the capabilities associated with achieving space superiority. So I know there was talk in the past about separating out and creating different tracks. Where's that discussion gone? Where has it led? What's the current kind of synopsis of what the service is thinking?

Brian Peterson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I won't get my years right, ⁓ but in the early 2020s, we actually did separate. We had a few tracks. We would bring Guardians in and they would either be in an Orbital Warfare track, an EW track, or a Space Battle Management track, which was a little bit of the catch-all. was your SIPRs, your SATCOM, your GPS, plus battle management functions. And it was aligned to the Space Power disciplines. ⁓ What they found to say in 2023-2024 was that one of the issues was from ⁓ a human capital perspective, you would graduate an OW track, but because we just didn't have the throughput we needed, you weren't guaranteed to actually go to an OW squadron. And so we were sending people, you you graduate OW and then you would go to the four EWS or to an EW unit, which isn't helpful. ⁓ And it wasn't anyone's fault. It's just kind of how it was shaking out based on the low numbers and managing this community. And the other thing that we realized is we weren't giving our guardians the requisite training to be able to speak the combined arms. They were still getting like, hey, you're an OW expert. ⁓ But where we were losing it is now how does OW expertly integrate with EW and then how do we battle management, battle manage that? And so the previous commander in me, Lieutenant Colonel Sass Fernandez, ⁓ one of the big pushes that she took was reintegrating, like getting rid of the tracks and then reintegrating a combined arms phase that takes those various stovepipes of knowledge and then actually figures out how to integrate them. And that's where we're at today. ⁓ One of the big tasks that the Space Forces put out in General Saltzman published a Guidance and Intent Memo, think in 2024 or 2025. on really making sure we're being clear in the roles and responsibilities between officer and enlisted. So one of the big efforts we've taken is we've actually separated our enlisted WIC so that right now they go through the same syllabus, but we're working on building a more technically focused syllabus that's more appropriate for our enlisted guardians. And with that in the future, you know, if I'm thinking big picture, five to 10 years, ⁓ If all the human capital things fall into line, we could potentially go back to tracks, maybe in our enlisted forces, we're really trying to drive technical knowledge, especially in EW and OW. But right now we're kind of merged back in focusing on combined arms at this point in time. But like we've kind of already said, I think we'll evolve in the next five years and then we'll probably evolve in the 10 years after that.

Bill Woolf: Mm-hmm. Yeah, perfect. Thanks Knuckles. Now you're speaking of the future vision. So you arrived at 328 having just spent time thinking about what the Space Force needs to look like in 20 years. Most commanders come from the operational side. How does that strategic perspective shape the way you see the 328's mission? Not just training today's operators, but building the institution the force will need in 2045.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, I think ⁓ much to the chagrin of my instructor cadre, I think sometimes I'm guilty of being the good idea fairy because I think big pictures. ⁓ So I really have to make sure I'm reigning myself in there and I'm not thinking too crazy ⁓ too fast because at the end of the day, it's our responsibility to train the course and train the students that are here. And that's ⁓ preeminent and it's our job. ⁓ But I do think it gives me a unique perspective. And I think from the there's a little bit of a macro, micro or big picture, near term picture perspective. I think from a macro perspective, what I've seen in my work in the futures division and S5 headquarters was a lot of, hey, what is the service going to look like in 20 years? And just monumental change, ⁓ or at least potential for monumental change. Some of the near term efforts really trying to build resiliency and CFC, potentially bringing on new weapon systems and new spacecraft capabilities. And so understanding what that five, 10, 15, 20 year outlook looks like, and at least understanding, that's going to have trickle down effects here at the weapons school. And I may not be needing to build for it today, but I at least need to set the conditions so that whoever follows me in this seat or the person who follows them is prepared to adjust the syllabus and prepared to make the requisite changes to ensure that we're training the best warfighters that we can for the space force. I think a little bit of the macro specific perspective is looking at the space force is really starting to understand how it conducts orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare. We've been pretty good at EW for a few decades, but really trying to look and say, okay, now that we understand how we're fighting in today's environment, we are not looking at docile or passive adversaries. our adversaries are also trying to figure out these same problems. And so as they evolve how they fight, we need to be ready to evolve how we fight. So what we think the solution today is from an orbital warfare perspective or EW perspective may not be the right solution. And so bringing that perspective of, things are changing really fast and we need to be prepared to either change the TTPs or integrate better with acquisitions or integrate better with tests so that new systems ⁓ take these things into account. ⁓ I, Brian Peterson's opinion is one of the cardinal sins we've always made is we've built the widget and then we've figured out how to fight the widget after the fact. And I think the better that the operators can actually articulate, hey, here's how I want to fight in five to 10 years. We can actually have positive influence on the acquisition community and help them because they are, they are busting their butt. to give us the best capability possible. But if we're not giving them like, this is how we should fight against this adversary, we're not creating a positive feedback loop and then we're only creating problems for ourselves down the road.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, that's a great point you make about collaboration with the acquisition community. And you said something else, Tactics, techniques and procedures. So TTPs ⁓ are tools that you use on existing capabilities. The other aspect of it is the testing tactics training cycle, and they almost intertwine because the TTPs are the techniques, tactics and procedures that you use, but that supports a weapon system that you're using to ensure space superiority in the space domain. So let's talk a little bit about that. feedback loop as weapons officers go out and they start integrating into these advanced training scenarios like space flags. How important is it to take the tactics, the TTPs that are on the shelf, run them through the process in accordance with the current scenario, and then provide that feedback through web tech processes, weapons and tactics conferences to establish a prioritized or a test prioritization list. What are we going to test in the future based on the capability gaps that the force is currently struggling to fill? And not to talk specific gaps at all, just about the process.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, I think from a process perspective, and we'll need to reach out to CFC and Colonel OxyContin, because I know ⁓ one thing CFC is trying to do is actually delegate some authorities for testing so that we're not putting everything through a very rigorous ⁓ test cycle or test. If it doesn't need to be, let's not go through the bureaucratic process, but let's do the level of test requisite for the TTP. But I think the big piece here is And most of our guardians understand this, right? Our environment is evolving, it's not stagnant. So I may create the best TTP or the weapons and tactics shop may create the best TTP for today's scenario, but that could be null and void in six months or six years. And so continually taking that outside of the squadron, ⁓ one, to get exposure against ⁓ live or at least a realistic threat environment, whether it be offered by space flag or the aggressors or whatever. to have those TTPs challenged so that we can improve them is absolutely critical. But then also sharing our TTPs with other squadrons is critical, right? Two Swiss may have ⁓ a defense TTP that works for them, and there could be elements that translate to four force ops. And they need to make sure they're actually sharing that. So bringing those TTPs outside the squadron helps enable that collaborative environment. From a feedback loop perspective, I think as we move forward in the Space Force and General Hague was out here last week at the Space Test and Evaluation Summit in Nellis. And one of the things he talked about was really trying to fix the operator and test ⁓ cycle and integration. And so just getting those TTPs out ⁓ is kind of step one, but then getting the right people to see them, to have feedback on them. And with a lot of new systems coming down the pike, we may... operational squads may not even be witting of them. So we need to create that linkage with the test community so that they know who to come to and say, hey, I've got a new widget I'm working on. And I know that, you know, captain or sergeant so-and-so is the expert on OW. Can I get them for a couple of days to kind of come through, think through TTPs and how we would test and how we would actually fight this weapon system so that we're then testing the right elements of it and giving feedback into that. And we're not creating TTPs on things yet, but it creates kind of that feedback and at least the discussion cycle early on, vice, a system goes through acquisition in a stovepipe and then test does their thing. And then it gets to the operators and the operators are going, whoa, this is not what we thought or it's not, it was built for a threat a couple years ago, and our adversaries advanced their threat capabilities and now it's not relevant. So I think it's absolutely critical of one, not sitting in our stovepipe. mission areas, but actually going out, sharing our knowledge, being okay that, hey, this, this TTP may not actually work the way I thought it was. ⁓ so being okay with failure, being okay with, Hey, I'm going to go fix it now. ⁓ but then also creating the, the connection across our different kinds of functional expertises to get it right as early as possible. And we're going to fail a lot and that's natural. And that's okay. ⁓ the thing is, is that we need to have the mentality that failure is okay, but now we're going to take our lessons learned. fix it as quickly as possible and then move on and keep learning from our failures. The day we stop failing from or stop learning from our failures, we're hosed.

Bill Woolf: Hey, you bring up a great point about lessons learned. So let's talk about weapons officers in terms of the debrief process and that critical thinking skill that you teach at the school and how important that is for weapons officers as you define what the weapons officer culture actually is.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, so debrief is, mean, when I first applied to weapons school, the first thing I was told was, hey, if you don't know how to debrief, you're gonna learn. And I think there's a few elements of debrief that are challenging for a lot of people. First, it's one of the first times that young guardians who may be absolute rock stars, you know, it's the first time you actually have to face your failures. and then think through them and talk about them and you don't get to go like, ⁓ no, I don't want to look at that failure. I'm going to turn away and focus on the next thing. No, we're going to focus on the failure. ⁓ but there's, it's not to little or beep down. It's because there's no greater way of learning than acknowledging and understanding your failures. But I think the biggest thing, and this is one of the things we look for in our young guardians that are applying or interested in weapon school is an ability to observe and an ability to actually inwardly kind of look at yourself and go, okay, was that a me issue? It'd be really easy to blame my counterpart over here, but maybe I'm at fault for this. And I always tell students, the minute you're giving a brief and as you say something wrong, you catch it in your head, you're like, ⁓ man, there it was. just said TTP and I used the wrong acronym or whatever it is. ⁓ that's when debrief is going to start to sink in because now you're capturing those observations. ⁓ I struggled my first few months awake because I would give a brief and it was, you know, I was, ⁓ was it Ricky Bobby? Like I just black out and then I'd come to it at end of the brief and I'd be like, was that good? Did I do okay? But I terrible taking observations. ⁓ and so really once you can gain that, that skill of building those observations and seeing, ⁓ what you're doing, it really helps people on the problem solving aspect of it. Cause now we've identified, Hey, here's the problem. ⁓ That's just the first step of the debrief. Now we need to go figure out what's the solution? How do I make the solution? Translate potentially across a few different scenarios and then usually the most challenging part of is the instructorship So now I need to take my failure. I need to learn from it and then I need to go teach other people It's not for me to just keep in my pocket You know, hopefully if I'm in an ops squadron, I've got a book with all the debriefs So a crew can just open it up and read through like ⁓ here's how they failed. Okay, that's awesome. Here's how

Bill Woolf: you

Brian Peterson: ⁓ and they're telling me, you know, do X, Y, and Z so I don't make the same mistake. That to me is the criticality of debrief. And it's not just from a weapons officer perspective. Like, yes, we pride ourselves in being skilled at it. And I think it should be the weapons officers and our weapons instructors who are training and leading the crew force. But debrief should be a guardian responsibility. ⁓ All of our guardians should be well versed in the debrief. And it's one of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised in as we look at potential recruits, their skill sets. ⁓ with the debrief and being able to come into Weaponschool and actually understand the process. They may not be great at it, but it's better than, you know, I showed up and I was like, what's a DFP? What's a lesson learned? They at least understand the nomenclature and they're already part of the way there towards that critical thinking. I think one of the most important things about Weaponschool, you know, I don't graduate anyone that I think is going to go be able to name every frequency of every signal or be able to execute every planning process perfectly. So we have documents and we have source material, but I do think the problem solving skill is the most important thing. I'm not necessarily building a planner, but I am building a problem solver. And if the weapons school fails at that, then we're failing at one of our core missions.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, you know, it's funny. ⁓ I used my weapon school training throughout my entire career. Everything I learned at weapon school I used throughout my career. And I had this false sense of, I don't know, ⁓ belief that I could stand up a nonprofit organization because of the experiences weapon school provided. So I leaned into standing up the Space Force Association because of the problem solving nature. ⁓ and capabilities I learned at weapon school. So it hits home for me for sure. And to your point, what you're doing is you're dispersing the culture of the weapon school by showing and teaching the rest of the crew force, to your point. It's not the weapons officer's trying to own the mission planning, execution, debrief process. It's sharing it with the rest of the crew force so that everyone can be a critical problem solver.

Brian Peterson: it's the most important thing we do and ⁓ our instructors and my D.O. is great. It great really hitting with students is ⁓ once you graduate here, if you're not building the next year, you're We need to up in the skill sets of our guardians.

Bill Woolf: Right, Yeah, I had the pleasure of having some great instructors when I went through. It was the only way I was able to get through it. Back in 2001, General Saltzman, General LaCoury, General Burt, heck, Lips Lutton is now the Global Strike Command Vice Commander, and so just phenomenal instructors, thank God. But now we're coming up on 30 years. since the space division stood up at Nellis in 1996 and I was a fifth class to go through in Bravo. Focus on helping fighter pilots integrate space support, which is what we did back in the day. You've been on both sides of that curriculum. When you look at the transformation from space support to space warfighting, how complete is it and what's still unfinished?

Brian Peterson: Yeah, that's a great question. ⁓ I think about that a lot actually with the completeness. Because I don't know, there's days that I look at and go, this transformation is complete. ⁓ And I think it just depends on if I'm looking at it from a macro versus micro. ⁓ I really do think one of the surprising things when I came back is, and it shouldn't be surprising, man, the instructors here are just so great and the students we put through are all brilliant. ⁓ The first mission I sat, that was an OW mission, and I had a student walking through nitty gritty OW ⁓ engagements and classical orbital elements and walking through maneuvers and how a maneuver is going to conduct. And if the adversary does X, here's what I'm going to do. Here's my primary, secondary, tertiary. Just an absolute blew my mind, ⁓ especially from where I was as an instructor, but also where I was as a student. And so I got lucky that when I was here as an instructor was when Osby Burleigh, the commander and Hemi Anderson were some of the first commanders to say, that the space force is moving in this war fighting direction perspective or effort. And we need to try and lead beyond the leading edge of that. And so I was with a lot of, know, hopefully in 20 years, someone looks back at these guys and says, you know, broker back pumper nickels. Pongo Summers, like those were the guys that looked at Orbital Warfare, Freecon, ReaperCrim, and said, hey, we need to start teaching that here. ⁓ so we could actually start teaching here and start doing execution elements, because Orbital is hard enough on its own. It's really hard when you're trying to do it on a 2D whiteboard. ⁓ And so in 2017, 2018 is when they led the effort to start shifting Break-A-Long and has it just ballooned and grown to what I think is a phenomenal war fighting course. The thing that I think we, previous instructor cadre and the previous commanders did a phenomenal job at is making sure we didn't lose the elements of the space support though, because that is still a function. We still owe that to the joint community. And so now when we walk into a mission, it may very much be a OW or EW scenario. But if it's an OW scenario and it's protecting a MILSATCOM asset, the students are forced to understand, why? What's important about that asset? So if you fail your OW mission and the adversary succeeds, what does the joint force deal with now? ⁓ And that was just, it was ⁓ a little bit eye watering to see like, okay, this is awesome. Like it's coming together. Not only, we may not be focusing on, you know, going and building giant plots like you and I had to do, or going and actually looking at like SATCOM windows. ⁓ but still the knowledge of, what's the effect if we lose this critical GMO capability, but then also rolling that into our EWOW mission. So I do think there's, ⁓ we are complete from the high level transition. Where I do think we have a lot of work to go is we have adversaries that are trying to keep us on our heels. And so while we, how the space for, as the space becomes a war fighting domain, like truly, ⁓ with new kit, new capabilities from our adversaries, and we race to keep pace and then potentially gain space superiority. I think the big thing we need to be flexible with is how we achieve space superiority is going to change. And we need to be adaptable and flexible here at the Weapon School to not get stuck in our ways and not just say, okay, we're going to teach OW like this, because that's how we've always done it. We need to have the brilliant people like John Boyd that are looking at the problem set and going, hey, I think it's changing and we need to start thinking about how it's changing so that we can be on the leading edge. the adversary may say, okay, I've got a new capability. And instead of our reaction cycle being years, it's the people that come out of this institution should be the ones that's making it months or potentially putting us on the leading edge and putting our adversary on their heels.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, thank you for that. And, you know, I asked this to some other senior leaders in the Space Force. What are the characteristics of the equivalent of John Boyd for the space domain?

Brian Peterson: think one of the things that, you know, John Boyd had a tremendous technical knowledge. ⁓ And when we started to think through what his space as a warfighting domain looked like, I think a lot of us rushed to find like, okay, who's the John Boyd of our people? You know, he's probably sitting in this auditorium with us. And man, I've worked with some brilliant, brilliant people who are just, you know, make me feel like I'm still in third grade. But as I look at a lot of these younger guardians, I think that, One of the biggest skill sets is being able to understand orbital mechanics ⁓ and then conservation of energy theory, what that translates to the space force and what those elements that while they may work aerodynamically, how do I then find the Keplerian equivalent of that and actually thinking about it from a orbital mechanics perspective and not the, I was raised very much in the checklist monkey mentality of read a step, do a step, eat a banana. but actually dissecting these problem sets. And I think that's the biggest thing is we need our young guardians to be able to one, understand why they're doing it, understand what the Joint Force is doing, understand how the elements of the space mission work together to achieve that mission, but then really start to delve down into the tactical, into the technical. At the end of the day, we are still somewhat ⁓ technocratic, kind of like the Air Force. We have a responsibility to do very technical and very ⁓ hard science things and so being able to have the smart people that can actually digest those problems and it's I think we're building the right young guardians that can start to identify those problems and so it's not just the technical capacity it's also the desire right like John Boyd was known for busting his butt ⁓ was known for being at work all the time ⁓ there's aspects of that that are great there's aspects that some people are critical of but at the end of the day like you're not going to solve those type of problems by just, you know, clocking in at nine o'clock and clocking out at five o'clock. You have to have a dedication to the mission, ⁓ into the service. And that doesn't necessarily mean you're working all the time, but you got to say, okay, here's the problem and I'm going to solve this thing thing, ⁓ one way or the other. And I'm going to be here till it's solved. And so those are some of the, really some of the criteria. And I think if we, if we want to find our John Boyd, like those are the skills that are at least the traits that that individual is going to have.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, and I like the way you talked about the technical prowess. And I remember every weapon system that is delivered to the Air Force, the Department of the Air Force, I don't know about the Space Force, but every weapon system in the Air Force gets a dash 23, dash 24. The technical orders that accompany the operator so that the operator knows and can delve into all of the technical aspects of that weapon system. Does the Space Force get those same technical orders at this point?

Brian Peterson: Yes, I don't think we quantify them as tech 23 tech 24s and you know going back to your earlier question, it's been a while since I've been in Ops. But I do know, you know, I'll go back to my experience. We still have technical level documents. You know, when I was in Sibbers and two Swiss and 11 Swiss like I had the thick book where I can open it up and read about the sensor and read about the comm systems, read about the propulsion. And so I know that is available. I just don't think it's codified the way the Air Force does it.

Bill Woolf: Yep, yep, no, that makes sense. And I think there's probably an opportunity there to delve into that a little bit more as the service starts building out this technical expertise. Because as you said, as soon as the operators start talking about technical specificity with the acquirers, then we can actually start to solve some of those problems and say, well, because of this widget right here and it's not doing the thing I needed to do, and this is why, is because if you look at it in the schematic, this is where it's messing up. That's what we need help with because that induces X number of milliseconds in my decision matrix. It's like, what'd you just say? And that's the point I think that we're probably gonna get to.

Brian Peterson: Yep. Yeah, I agree. And a lot of our acquisition professionals have those technical skill sets and technical backgrounds. I've had multiple conversations with phenomenal acquirers who can get to levels that, you know, when I was a lieutenant, I never would have been able to speak to that educational level. And these are young lieutenants, young captains who just get it. And so I think as operators, we need to make sure we're holding ourselves to that same standard so that we can actually have those conversations and solve the tough problem.

Bill Woolf: Knuckles, weapon school culture across all domains carries a specific identity. And you mentioned it already. Humble, approachable experts who are relentless about preparation and ruthless about standards. The Space Force is six years old and still figuring out its identity. How do you cultivate that culture in a service this young? And how do you know when it's actually taking hold?

Brian Peterson: Man, that's a deep one. ⁓ Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, there's a few things. It's definitely a focus on war fighting and then that ruthless prioritization of readiness. ⁓ Our kind of weapons, the document that guides what we do as weapons officers is the DAF Man 11, TAC-415. And one of the biggest things it tells us to do is, hey, we are responsible for the generation and assessment of unit readiness for our commander. I think as you walk on an ops floor and you see people that are focused on, this is my mission. I understand why I am going after that mission. I understand my purpose in life. That was something when I was young, a young officer that you could walk on an ops floor and it just wasn't there. You people understood, hey, here's my tactical tasks. Here's what I need to do today. But that connection to our purpose was a question we've strived for. And I think now that we're actually at our own service. We've really started to coalesce on that ⁓ in building that war fighting culture. And everyone can debate whether or not we're there or not. But I think really when you start to see that is when you start to have conversations with the young guardians and they immediately jump to, hey, here's my mission. Here's what I'm doing. Here's why I'm doing it. ⁓ Here's what I need from other mission areas. It's not just me. I'm one part of this larger ecosystem. ⁓ And so with that understanding the importance for readiness, Spaw 4GEN is critical for what we're doing and building that mentality where readiness is the primary thing we need to achieve so that we can actually present combat forces to combatant commanders that are ready to do their job and will succeed at their mission. ⁓ Understanding why that's important is critical. ⁓ One of the things I also think as leaders, And then one thing that weapons officers that we try and tell our guys is, hey, yes, ruthless prioritization of readiness, focus on war fighting, but we also need to be leaders and make sure we're taking care of our people. ⁓ So there's that balance that we have to strive for. I think the space force has done a pretty good job so far trying to find that balance. And I think the last element of your question was, you know, how do we see it? How do we know when it's actually when we're producing it? ⁓ I think we start to see some of the the indicators of it when you go to a space flag or you sit on a flash point and you see a lieutenant or a young captain stand up there and start to give briefs and start to show that desire and where they're actually able to speak through all the elements. And it's not a top level of the onion brief. They're able to get down into the second, third order effects, able to talk through, if I do X, I need this unit to go do Y because we're integrating in a combined arms perspective. ⁓ You start to see that education come through, the desire to come through, and then being able to focus on, hey, this is my mission and it's what I'm here to do, is really when you start to see the readiness mindset take hold.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, phenomenal. It's and I'm sure, you know, again, small force, small weapons officer community. And so it's going to take a second. You know, how many graduates are you up to now?

Brian Peterson: The 450.

Bill Woolf: Yeah, that's not a lot. That's not a tremendous amount of graduates to, as you say, talk about all the things that the Space Force and the service are currently working on. that, you know, the 400 doesn't, that's not in action today. That's who's been through the course. And so, for example, I was graduate 101. Well, I'm way outdated in terms of information and otherwise, but you got a big re-blu coming up. So for those folks, who are listening, who are part of the weapons officer community. What would you say to them? What big event do you have coming up and what are you planning for Reblu?

Brian Peterson: Yeah, so I think we're incredibly excited. So our 30th anniversary is coming up. We've talked about it a couple of times, or we've at least alluded to it. And so from a Reblu perspective, so when we say Reblu, and I guess in the Space Force now, we might need to find a new term, but that's a little bit of an Air Force ⁓ hangover term. ⁓ But really what we're looking to do is bring back those who are retired, bring our active duty, bring the whole community together and kind of re-baseline everyone. know, everyone... You leave Nellis and then you go to your missions and sometimes you lose sight of the other mission areas. so bringing everyone back, right now we're looking at a three-day Reblu. The first day is going to be focused a lot on combat and command updates. So we have some of our patches that have supported SouthCom, supported UCom, supported CINCOM that are going to come out and brief the community at the classified level and walk through, hey, here's how the Ad this series evolved. Here's what's going on today, real world. ⁓ And able to teach, know, a lot of us have come up with great ideas that went into plans throughout our careers and spoiler alert, some of those may not work anymore today. And so being able to go like, ⁓ man, that idea didn't work. What are we doing next? And re-baselining the community on the state of play for today. The second day we're going to look at really educating the community on, hey, here's what we do at the weapons school now. ⁓ A lot of people, as we've talked about, we've gone from a transformation to space support to the war fighting domain. ⁓ A lot of people don't know how we've done that. So trying to bring everyone up to speed on what we do. We'll show people ⁓ some snapshots of the simulators we use, something you and I didn't have. For us, a mission was given a brief. ⁓ Now they actually have execution components to their missions. And then the third day is going to be a lot of camaraderie building. ⁓ So we'll do a golf tournament. We'll have a roll call. We'll still do a couple new things. know, the 328th is going to expand here in a few years. So we're getting ready to break ground on a second building. We'll do a tour of that facility with a lot of the guests who are here. So they really see how we're looking to expand. ⁓ Starcom's ⁓ put in their 26TAC1 op board in order for us to look at building an intelligence course and a cyber course. So that's the new building is requisite for that to happen. So we're really trying to expand it. want to make sure the community is up to speed on. everything we're doing here today. Cause I truly believe, you know, when I look at the ecosystem of weapons officers, that the schoolhouse should not function as, you know, a siloed node that, you know, we get a student, we push them out and then we don't care about them anymore. To me, Nellis and to me, the 328th should be home base for our community and really being able to one, stay updated on everything we do because that's how we make sure we have the best academics, but also helping the community out. You know, I am blessed in that I hoard a lot of talent here. I have some of the smartest people in the Space Force behind that vault door. And so when we have time, when we have the ability to go do support new missions, that's where I want to be pushing my people. so bringing everyone together for the 30th, not only from an educational perspective, but also a camaraderie, building that community, building those linkages so that when we all leave Nellis on June 12th, ⁓ if one of our new OW has an EW question, he knows who to go to and we can kind of rebuild those linkages. So that's really what the 30th is about for me. It's about education, reconnecting the community and then also really just building that community aspect because at the end of the day, if someone's got a patch on their shoulder, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I'm helping them and I would expect the same and we're all going to do our mission. We're all going to help everybody but. When a brother or sister patch comes calling, like I'm going to put everything down because I know what they're doing is important and I need to help them out.

Bill Woolf: That's phenomenal words. So let's look at the next 30 years coming up on the first 30. Not the next class, not the next exercise, but the institution itself. What's the message you want to send to future guardians, to the Joint Force, and to the people who fund this mission about what the 328th produces and what it needs to keep producing?

Brian Peterson: Yeah, I think we've talked about unwavering standards. ⁓ intent, you know, obviously we want every guardian to be an instructor, a problem solver and a leader, at least amongst our officer corps. The intent of this institution though is to build those expert instructors, those expert problem solvers. And it's not because they're smarter or they're greater or they're just the best people in the world. It's because they've gone through a training that has pushed them to their limit and shown them like, Here's how I respond under stress. So when we're actually, know, when the balloon goes up, the weapons officer should be the ones that are standing at the doorway saying, okay, I'm ready to go problem solve. Like this is what I've been waiting for. And so that's, that's what we're building. I think the big, some of the things that we need to be focused on is our weapons officer community needs to be comfortable with change. ⁓ The service is evolving. We're, we're doing so much and we're getting a lot of external help on, ⁓ expanding the size of the force, expanding our mission sets, our mission areas, our mission systems. And so being comfortable with that change, because it should be the weapons officers that from an operational and tactical perspective are leading that problem solving. That's my expectation for our young guardian weapons officers, that they're the ones stepping up and saying, hey, I'm here to lead and I'm here to help problem solve this. And then I think... really as we look at and we've talked a little bit about the merge between acquisitions and tests and operations and how, you know, in a space environment that has to be, there has to be connective tissue across those three. I think as we build new weapons officers, we really have to focus on, hey, I'm gonna go be the expert at my new weapon system or in my mission area. But when the acquirers or testers come for support or for help or for questions, we need to focus on fully burdening things. ⁓ We really have to be able to understand, you know, 10 new systems or a bunch of new squadrons are coming down the pike. Well, how does that affect our current mission areas? But then also, how does that affect the training requirements? How does it affect what I do here at the Weapons School? And so being comfortable with that change, being really the ones to throw your hand up and lead that change, but then also communicating across our community and with the various other functional communities of test acquisitions operations so that we're getting it right. That's what I would say is some of the key things we can't fail at. As long as we're talking, we're going to start to get things right, but it's when we start to silo ourselves that we inevitably will fail.

Bill Woolf: So you're talking about the community basically being evangelists for Space Force versus just Insular, which by the way, ⁓ I'll be honest with I think I've felt the same in that if we spend too much time nuggets down in the mission and not enough time in community affairs and figuring out how to help the rest of the service, ⁓ I think we're doing disservice to ourselves.

Brian Peterson: Yeah, think evangelist is word. Now I'm co-listened to that. ⁓ I think that's a lot of the down and in that I would focus on, but there's also the up and out perspective, right? We're not going to get the resources. We're not going to get what we need as a service, as a community, you know, space operations. If we don't actually take up the mantle and educate and ⁓ be evangelists for our cause. ⁓ One of the most eye-opening things I've seen is when I've had the privilege of participating in joint staff working groups or combat and command working groups. If you look at the members from the DAF that are invited to those, it is almost always filled with a significant number of weapons officers. And it's because the joint community recognizes the value proposition of our school and the community that we've built. And so I really think, hey, go do your day job perfectly, but don't ever miss an opportunity to build, teach, and lead not only fellow guardians, but the joint force and those outside. Cause at the end of the day, if we can't explain what we're doing to others, we're going to fail.