Sirotin Intelligence Briefing: November 2–8, 2026: Democrats Take Both Chambers and Put Golden Dome's Reconciliation Money in Doubt, Trump Declares Space "the Province of All Humans," and the Space Force Stands Up Its Special Operations Component

This week's Sirotin Intelligence analysis covers the November 3 midterms, in which Democrats won at least 54 Senate seats by flipping Texas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina and took the House, ending the reconciliation route that was to carry $17.1 billion of Golden Dome's FY27 request and $12 billion of the Space Force's $71 billion, alongside President Trump's election-day proclamation, "The American Declaration of Freedom in Space," which calls the solar system "the province of all humans" and commits the United States to "a permanent presence by American citizens" beyond Earth, and the November 2 activation of Space Forces Special Operations Command at MacDill, the first new service component in U.S. Special Operations Command since 2006. We also cover Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess's plan to add 2,800 Guardians and 2,000 civilians in FY27 "if the budget comes through," the House China Committee's bipartisan demand for answers on the China Aerospace Studies Institute cuts, USSF-432 as the fourth suspected Space-Based Sensing and Targeting launch since August, and the loss of NASA's Swift observatory after Katalyst's LINK rescue spacecraft failed to grapple it. Rounding out the week: "minor" U.S. strikes on Qeshm Island and a new CENTCOM task force to choke Iran's land and Caspian trade as Vance says "the reason we lost is the war," trilateral Ukraine talks set for Abu Dhabi on November 10 as Russia fires 36 ballistic missiles at Kyiv in a night, Starship Flight 15's double-catch attempt set for Friday the 13th, Blue Origin's GS3 third stage and Northstar engine, Musk's "terrestrial compute will be peanuts" claim, and Christophe Bosquillon's read on what the new Congress means for NASA, the Space Force, Golden Dome, and the $1.5 trillion request.

🛡️ Defense Highlights

• The midterms and the defense budget – Democrats take both chambers, the $350 billion reconciliation request loses its path, and Golden Dome becomes "political": Democrats won control of the Senate with at least 54 seats, flipping Texas (James Talarico over Ken Paxton), Maine (Troy Jackson over Susan Collins), North Carolina (Roy Cooper), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina, and took the House; Alaska and Mississippi were still uncalled late in the week, and Schumer called it a "generational remake of the Senate map." For defense, the consequence is structural. The FY27 request of $1.54 trillion is $1.15 trillion in base discretionary spending plus $350 billion in mandatory reconciliation funding, and a Democratic Congress will not pass a party-line reconciliation bill for the Pentagon. That package was to carry $17.1 billion of Golden Dome's $17.5 billion, $12 billion of the Space Force's $71 billion, and $53.6 billion of the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group's $54.6 billion. John Plumb, the former assistant secretary for space policy now at K2 Space, told CyberSat on November 3: "There's no $1.5 trillion dollar budget coming. Ever," and "When you use the words Golden Dome, now it's political." GlobalData's analysts expect the program to be "trimmed down" with space-based interceptors under the most pressure and money shifting to ground radars and regional defenses; CSIS's Mark Cancian expects moderate growth rather than $1.5 trillion and calls the Trump-class battleship "effectively dead." Collins's loss vacates the Senate Appropriations chair. Rep. Jeff Crank, co-chair of the House Golden Dome Caucus and a Strategic Forces member, lost in Colorado Springs; Rep. Jen Kiggans, whose district includes Wallops, lost to Elaine Luria. Payload reports Democrats are considering investigations of Musk, including the Starlink throttling in Ukraine. Congress returns November 9 with all twelve FY27 appropriations bills, the NDAA, and a December 11 CR deadline outstanding, and the lame-duck session is now the last one Republicans control.
• Space Forces Special Operations Command activates at MacDill – Space Special Warfare Teams, the first new SOCOM component since 2006: The Space Force activated SPACEFOR-SOC on November 2 at MacDill Air Force Base, with Col. Peter "Charlie" Norsky commanding, after the component took administrative effect in early October. It assigns Guardians to Theater Special Operations Commands and joint task forces worldwide through Space Special Warfare Teams, small modular units combining space, cyber, and intelligence specialists that provide mobile, low-signature space capabilities in contested, incomplete-data environments, and it standardizes how the Space Force organizes, trains, and equips forces for special operations. "The Space Force is securing the ultimate high ground to enable the Joint fight," Schiess said; SOCOM commander Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley called it "an enduring and accountable way to integrate space power into special operations." The Space Force now has components in all seven geographic combatant commands and SOCOM, with elements for Cyber Command, Strategic Command, and Transportation Command still to come. At the Mitchell Institute on November 4, Schiess said the service will add 2,800 Guardians and 2,000 civilians in FY27 "if the budget comes through," with most going to components, priority to CENTCOM, EUCOM, NORTHCOM, AFRICOM, and INDOPACOM, and noted that Guardians deployed with Space Forces Central during Epic Fury were injured and took enemy fire while operating electronic warfare and missile defense systems. "As the CR continues, then it becomes more difficult." The $71 billion request is more than double FY26, and $12 billion of it sat in the reconciliation package the election just closed.
• House China Committee demands answers on CASI – Moolenaar and Khanna give the Air Force until November 20: House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar and Ranking Member Ro Khanna wrote to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on November 4 asking for a briefing by November 20 on "resourcing and personnel decisions" at the China Aerospace Studies Institute, warning that "under-resourcing" CASI "could risk undermining the ability of military leaders and civilian policymakers to understand" Beijing's aerospace strategy and capabilities. The Air Force moved all ten civilian positions to unfunded status in September; staff remain until reassigned or they leave, the posts will not be refilled, and the service says the institute will continue with military personnel. Director Brendan Mulvaney says removing the civilians effectively shuts it down, and CASI's current commitments run only until about March. The Air Force said it "will respond directly to the committee." The letter is bipartisan and arrives as the committee's Democratic members prepare to take the gavel in January, so the Air Force's November 20 briefing will go to the people who set the hearing schedule for the next two years.
• USSF-432 flies from Vandenberg – the fourth suspected Space-Based Sensing and Targeting batch, roughly 92 satellites since August: A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg at 4:48 p.m. PST on November 6 with USSF-432, a classified Space Force payload; booster B1095 landed on Of Course I Still Love You on its eighth flight and SpaceX ended the webcast about ten minutes in. Neither SpaceX nor the Space Force disclosed the payload. Stage drop zones matched earlier Starlink Group 15 launches, and NextSpaceflight and industry trackers read the mission, designated "R-4," as the fourth batch of Starshield-bus satellites for the Space-Based Sensing and Targeting program, bringing the series to roughly 92 spacecraft since August. It was SpaceX's 125th launch of 2026, the 119th Falcon 9, and the 14th national security Falcon 9 mission of the year. If the identification is right, the series is the moving-target-indication layer the Space Force took over from the Air Force and Army after the JSTARS retirement, and it is being populated at a rate of one batch a month while the FY27 money for the program sits in a continuing resolution.
• Swift reenters over Sumatra after Katalyst's LINK fails to grapple it – a $30 million rescue lost to a stuck valve and a power switch: NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory reentered at 7:39 a.m. EST on November 4 over North Sumatra, ending 22 years of gamma-ray burst astronomy, after increased solar activity dragged it down faster than projected. NASA had contracted Katalyst Space in September 2025 for $30 million to reboost Swift with the LINK spacecraft, which launched on a Pegasus XL from Kwajalein on July 3; Swift had no grapple fixtures and was never designed to be serviced. An unresponsive reaction control valve set LINK spinning, and a power circuit switch failure ended the attempt before a grapple. Katalyst's Kieren Wilson called Swift an "unprepared but cooperative partner." The loss lands a week after NASA asked industry how to reboost Hubble, which also has no propulsion and faces a similar timeline. For the Space Force's own servicing plans, the relevant detail is where the failure occurred: the first U.S. commercial rescue of a government spacecraft ended because of faults on the servicer, while the target behaved as expected.

Major Contract Awards This Week:

• Lockheed Martin Corp., Rotary and Mission Systems – Trident II fleet support: A $122,449,494 cost-plus-incentive-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee Navy Strategic Systems Programs contract for Trident II shipboard integration and Navigation Subsystem development under Strategic Weapon System Trident Fleet Support, including work for the United Kingdom, through October 31, 2030.
• The Boeing Co. – P-8A retrofit kits: A $119,654,234 cost-plus-fixed-fee Naval Air Systems Command modification exercising options for nine retrofit A-kits (seven Navy, two Royal Australian Air Force) and installation of four on Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft, through May 2030.
• Lockheed Martin Corp. – Global Strike mission planning: An up-to-$80,000,000 time-and-materials Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center task order for software engineering, sustainment, and updates to Global Strike mission planning applications, through January 19, 2030.
• Computer World Services Corp. – Cyberspace Capabilities Center: A $33,842,284 ceiling firm-fixed-price Air Combat Command contract for technical and software support to Air Force telecommunications and the Defense Information Systems Network at Scott Air Force Base, through June 30, 2034.
• Systems Planning and Analysis Inc. – Space Systems Command cloud: A $30,752,715 Space Systems Command modification (P00031) adding cloud compute, software licenses, platform integration, and workspace enablement, raising the cumulative contract value to $312,899,486, through December 31, 2029.
• The Boeing Co. – Japan E-767 AWACS: A $16,910,812 Foreign Military Sales option-period modification from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center for post-delivery support of Japan's E-767 Airborne Warning and Control System, through November 14, 2027.
• Georgia Tech Applied Research Corp. – RAAF C-130J countermeasures: A $9,896,783 sole-source, FMS-funded cost-plus-fixed-fee Air Force Life Cycle Management Center task order for engineering support of the Royal Australian Air Force's AN/ALQ-251 radio frequency countermeasures laboratory, through November 4, 2028.

🌐 Policy, Geopolitical & Legal Developments

• "The American Declaration of Freedom in Space" – a proclamation on election day that names settlement as policy and directs nothing: President Trump issued the proclamation on November 3, published in the Federal Register on November 6. It declares that "the solar system and all of outer space beyond Earth are the province of all humans," opens them to "exploration, development, use, and the establishment of a permanent presence by American citizens," consistent with U.S. law and international obligations, and frames an interplanetary civilization built on freedom and individual liberty as America's destiny. It contains no directives, deadlines, or funding. NASA issued no release; a spokesperson said the agency is committed to the vision and pointed to Artemis III in 2027, the 2028 landing, and the first Moon Base. Scott Pace, former National Space Council executive secretary, said the "province of all humans" language is consistent with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and that "the term does not mean that space is a global commons in a legal sense." OSTP Director Michael Kratsios posted it in capital letters. The timing, the day Republicans lost Congress, means the proclamation is the administration's statement of long-run intent going into a legislature that will write the NASA authorization and the FY28 budget, the first with Isaacman's input. Christophe takes up that Congress below.
• Vance says "the reason we lost is the war" as CENTCOM stands up Task Force Iron Gate and the U.S. hits Qeshm Island twice: Vice President Vance wrote on November 4 that "the reason we lost is the war," arguing Republican turnout held but 2024 Trump voters switched sides; Trump told the Wall Street Journal the conflict and gas prices hurt but "I did the right thing." The week's military moves ran the other way. U.S. forces struck Iranian air defenses on Qeshm Island in the strait on November 2 and again on November 6, which Trump called "minor strikes," after saying Thursday the U.S. might have to "destroy" the rest of Iran and telling CNN on Sunday that resuming the war is "highly unlikely" if talks progress. On November 7 CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper created Task Force Iron Gate, about 20 people in Tampa, to extend the blockade to Iran's land borders and Caspian trade; CENTCOM says the maritime blockade has blocked more than $25 billion in crude exports, and on Saturday U.S. forces disabled the St. Kitts-flagged M/V Huda in the Gulf of Oman. The IRGC called Iron Gate wordplay, claimed another U.S. drone shot down, and lifted its self-imposed 1,200-mile missile range limit. Araghchi said mediator travel has paused since the election and told the White House to make a choice; Rubio said the two sides are not "on the verge of a breakthrough." UKMTO logged no attacks after November 5 despite Iranian mine claims on the 6th and 7th, which ISW reads as pressure on shippers to seek Iranian permission. The Houthis hit an Aramco building in Riyadh's financial district, Saudi strikes in Sanaa province killed dozens, the UN counts more than 1,600 dead since fighting resumed in Yemen, and Putin met Rezaei about a Russia–Iran gas pipeline. With Iron Gate in Tampa and the IRGC's range limit lifted, both governments added pressure in the same week each described itself as waiting on the other to negotiate.
• Trilateral talks set for Abu Dhabi November 10–11 – as Russia fires 36 ballistic missiles at Kyiv in one night and targets the nuclear plants' grid links: Steve Witkoff announced on November 2 that the U.S. will mediate working-level Ukraine–Russia talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11, the first trilateral round since February, covering post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian issues, and next steps; Witkoff and Jared Kushner lead for the U.S., Rustem Umerov for Ukraine, and Vladimir Medinsky, Igor Kostyukov, Yuri Ushakov, and Deputy Foreign Ministers Galuzin and Ryabkov for Russia. U.S. officials will first meet France, Germany, the UK, the EU, and NATO in Brussels on security guarantees; Maria Zakharova said Europeans have no place at the table and called any foreign deployment to Ukraine "categorically unacceptable." Zelensky wants an Article 5-style U.S. commitment backed by a congressional vote and an army of up to 800,000. Overnight November 6 to 7, Russia launched 172 drones, 137 of them jet-powered, and 36 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and its oblast, damaging the Northern Bridge and striking a substation that links the Rivne and Khmelnytskyi nuclear plants to the capital; ISW cites an unconfirmed intercepted plan to cut the nuclear plants off from the unified grid and isolate Kyiv. Ukrainian forces counterattacked northeast of Borova, southeast of Lyman, and toward Hulyaipole, advanced in Mala Tokmachka, and cleared Mykolaivka; Ukraine hit the Saratov refinery for at least the eighth time this year and the Proton-Electrotex plant in Oryol, which makes Iskander-M components. Zelensky asked Germany again for Taurus. The delegations meet in Abu Dhabi with parts of Kyiv without power and with an incoming Senate majority that has said it intends to examine the Starshield throttling that reduced Ukraine's jet-drone intercept rate last month.

🛰️ Technology & Commercial Developments

• Starship Flight 15 on Friday the 13th – the first attempt to catch both stages, 14 orbits, 22 hours, Block 3 vehicles:SpaceX set Flight 15 for no earlier than Friday, November 13, in a 75-minute window opening at 4:45 p.m. CT from Starbase's Orbital Launch Pad 2, pending regulatory approval. Musk confirmed on November 6 that "SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship on the upcoming flight," putting the odds at "more likely than not." Booster 22 returns for a tower catch about 6 minutes 35 seconds after liftoff; Ship 42, the first Block 3 ship, inserts into a roughly 275-kilometer orbit, deploys 26 Starlink V3 satellites, completes about 14 orbits over more than 22 hours, and attempts a deorbit burn, reentry, flip, and tower catch at about T+22 hours 32 minutes, with contingency splashdown zones in the Gulf and the Pacific. A ship has never been caught; a double catch would be the first full intact recovery of an orbital-class rocket. Starlink stood at 13,096 launched and 11,193 working on November 7. The same week Musk, replying to a Sequoia model projecting SpaceX capex of $290 billion in 2027 and 250 Starship flights in 2028, wrote that "terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute" and that orbital compute deployed per month "probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028"; SpaceX confirmed a closed $40 billion debt raise for GPUs and guided to $35 to $40 billion in Q4 capex. Those projections assume a reusable Starship upper stage, and Flight 15 is the first attempt to recover one.
• Blue Origin unveils GS3 and Northstar – a BE-7 third stage for 20 tonnes to TLI, a 715,000-pound-thrust engine, and a 2028 cislunar government mission: CEO Dave Limp revealed two developments at Blue Origin's Up.Summit at Kennedy on November 5. GS3 is a BE-7-powered third stage for direct GEO injection and Earth-escape missions: up to 14 tonnes to GEO and 20 tonnes to trans-lunar injection on the New Glenn 9x4, 8 and 10 tonnes on the 7x2, fitting inside the interstage with the same fairing and adapters, and built around what Blue Origin says will be the first composite liquid hydrogen tank flown in space; the tank has held 100% of maximum expected operating pressure for 2.5 hours and 150% for ten minutes at Launch Site One. A government mission to cislunar space is planned on GS3 in 2028. Northstar is a methane-oxygen first-stage engine at 715,000 pounds of thrust against BE-4's 640,000, keeping the oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, assembled in under a day, and taken from approval to development testing in eleven months. Blue Origin says GS3 is not required for its Artemis lander plans but could support sustained lunar operations. New Glenn has not flown since the May pad explosion, and ULA's Vulcan, which flies on BE-4 engines, returns from its own nine-month grounding on November 13. For NASA, which put Blue Moon Mark 2 on the Artemis III manifest last month, the 20-tonne trans-lunar figure is the one that bears on sustained lunar logistics.
• Rocket Lab, CAS Space, and Galactic Energy fly as China launches three Yaogan 51 reconnaissance satellites:Rocket Lab's Electron launched "The Sea God Surveys" from Mahia on November 2 with a radar satellite for Japan's iQPS. CAS Space's Kinetica 2 flew SpaceSail Polar Group 17 for the Qianfan broadband constellation from Jiuquan on November 3; a Long March 2C launched Yaogan 51-07 through 09, three reconnaissance satellites, from Xichang on November 5; and Galactic Energy's Ceres-2 placed four satellites in orbit from Jiuquan on November 6. The European Commission is due to decide by the end of November between the HYDEF and HYDIS consortia for the second phase of its endo-atmospheric hypersonic interceptor, about €100 million from the EDF plus €133 million from eleven member states, running mid-2027 to mid-2029. Shield AI announced the first full-scale X-BAT prototype on November 4 against $200 million in Navy and DIU awards matched by private capital. Stellar Alpina unveiled the Monarch lunar orbiter and Morpho lander, PLD Space completed a flight termination test for MIURA 5, and Hydrosat announced high-resolution mid-wave infrared thermal imaging. The week's five logged launches included three Chinese, one of them military reconnaissance, and one U.S. national security mission.

💭 A Word From Christophe Bosquillon

Democrats swept both the Senate and the House with double-digit majorities. The National Security Space Association shared Velos' 2026 Space Sector Election Tracker, which compiled the results and shared their analysis in "Congress: A View From Space," showing how key races across 29 Space Hubs will shape representation in the next Congress. We attended a briefing by Jack Kiraly, Chief of Advocacy, The Planetary Society, who went into the engineering details of Congressional dynamics.

FY 2028 appropriations will be the first budget cycle that will have input from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, while many Democrats intend to hold oversight hearings. The Sadler Report with Jordan DeRaad produced a special document on Key Congressional Members' Positions on Space and Defense. These various data sources lead to a provisory picture on five topics:

• On NASA, incoming leaders are united in opposing the Trump administration's proposed cuts, especially to science, and in backing Artemis as China competes for the Moon.
• The U.S. Space Force benefits from broad bipartisan support, treating space as a warfighting domain. On November 4 evening, we attended a discussion with General Doug Schiess, Chief of Space Operations, hosted by the Schriever Spacepower Series of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Gen. Schiess predicted continued bipartisan support for the Space Force.
• Golden Dome undoubtedly faces the worst oppostion compared with any other space and defense program. Democrat Senator for Delaware Chris Coons has said the program "will not get funded" under a Democratic majority. Industry executives warned that with future funding up in the air, companies are unsure how much to invest in their own technology and production capacity.
• Democrats are massively opposed to the $1.5T overall defense budget request, to funding through reconciliation, and to linking defense funding to the Iran war. The endgame might be closer to $1T.
• There is bipartisan acquisition reform consensus: the Pentagon must buy innovative technology faster and bring in new companies.

On November 3, POTUS issued the "American Declaration of Freedom in Space." New Congress must now work in the interest of U.S. space power and national security.

Have a great Space Week ahead!