South Korea Joins a U.S. Space Force War Game for the First Time as a Classified Launch Slips to Tuesday

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg in 2018 (file photo; not the USSF-432 mission). Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Jim Araos, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

South Korea’s Air Force is taking part in a U.S.-led multinational space war game for the first time this week, a tabletop exercise designed to strengthen joint operations in space, Yonhap News Agency reported. The exercise, called Partner to Win, runs Monday through Friday in Florida with the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Brazil and the United States. The U.S. Space Force launched the war game this year to improve readiness for combined space missions and coordination with partner countries on policy and strategy.

Key figures: 6 countries in the partner to win war game · 8th flight for falcon 9 booster b1095 on ussf-432 · 6 space surveillance firms in the first casr purchase agreements

The event is being held in Orlando, and South Korea’s delegation includes Kim Si-mon, head of the Air Force Headquarters Space Center, along with Air Force and Defense Ministry officials, Asia Today reported. In February, South Korean Air Force Chief of Staff Son Seok-rak held a coordination call with Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, then the Space Force’s chief of space operations, to discuss setting up the war game and Seoul’s participation, after which the Space Force sent a formal invitation.

Each delegation will discuss cooperation and responses to simulated, complex crises in space. “Participating in this wargame will serve as an opportunity to further strengthen space cooperation with allies and partner nations in response to changes in the space operations environment,” Kim said. South Korea’s other defense moves this week, including a new drone agency, are in today’s Indo-Pacific report.

USSF-432 slips twice

SpaceX is scheduled to launch USSF-432, a classified satellite deployment for the Space Force, on a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, with a window from 5:28 p.m. to 9:28 p.m. Pacific time (8:28 p.m. to 12:28 a.m. Eastern), Florida Today reported. The first stage is to land on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific. A previously scheduled Starlink launch from Vandenberg was removed from the calendar.

The mission has slipped twice by about a day. On Oct. 28 its target moved from 01:56 UTC Nov. 2 to 01:42 UTC Nov. 3, and on Nov. 1 it moved again to 01:28 UTC Nov. 4, according to the launch tracker RocketRune. The first-stage booster, B1095, is flying for the eighth time. Details of classified national security payloads are withheld. Recent launches are covered in our Nov. 1 space war report.

A new special operations component

The Space Force planned a formal ceremony on Nov. 2 for its new component to U.S. Special Operations Command, which it activated Oct. 7 as its ninth component command, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported. The Space Force had operated a special forces element at SOCOM headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but not a formal component. Congress had paused the move in the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act until the service provided more detail on its plans. “While space capabilities are already integrated into [SOCOM] missions, this activation institutionalizes how the Space Force organizes, trains, equips, and presents forces for the special operations enterprise,” the service said in an Oct. 14 statement.

The Space Force’s Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, created more than three years ago to give the military surge access to commercial space capabilities in an emergency, has only now put an initial group of companies under purchase agreements, Space Intel Report said. All six are space domain awareness providers.

Promotions to senior master sergeant, the Space Force’s second-highest enlisted grade, have surged to the highest level in the service’s history as officials plan to expand the enlisted corps, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported. The magazine’s daily report also highlighted that U.S. Air Force fighters have returned to an air defense alert posture at Eareckson Air Station in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands for the first time in many years, as reported by The War Zone. Wider U.S. force coverage is on our military news hub.

Policy week in Washington

Gen. Douglas Schiess, who recently took over as the Space Force’s chief of space operations, is scheduled to speak Wednesday morning at the Mitchell Institute with retired Gen. Kevin Chilton, a former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, SpacePolicyOnline reported. The site said the recent encounter between Russia’s Kosmos 2612 and the U.S. ICEYE-X36 satellite was “almost certain to come up.” At the same time, the Nuclear Threat Initiative is holding a discussion titled “Weapons in Orbit: Reducing Risk in a New Era of Space Competition,” with former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall among the speakers. All 12 fiscal 2027 appropriations bills and the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act remain unfinished, with the current Congress ending no later than Jan. 3, 2027, the site noted.

Watch for the USSF-432 launch on Tuesday evening, any public readout from Partner to Win and the Space Force’s SOCOM component ceremony.

Sources

• Yonhap News Agency: S. Korea's Air Force to participate in U.S.-led space war game for 1st time
• Asia Today: S. Korean Air Force joins U.S. Space Force wargame for first time
• Florida Today: What rocket launches are coming up this week in California? Schedule
• RocketRune: USSF-432 launch from Vandenberg SFB
• Air & Space Forces Magazine: Space Force Activates Component Under Special Operations Command
• Space Intel Report: US Space Force effort to assure surge capacity on commercial space assets starts small
• Air & Space Forces Magazine: Air & Space Forces Magazine Daily Report, Nov. 2, 2026
• SpacePolicyOnline.com: What's Happening in Space Policy November 1-8, 2026