COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — In President Donald Trump's first week in office, some expected he would announce moving Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.
U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama, announced in November he expected the future of Space Command would be one of the first things President Trump would address. As we near the end of President Trump's first week, the timeline isn't clear but other lawmakers are hinting the announcement is expected soon.
"I feel very good about it," U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama shared to social media on Wednesday about the likelihood of Space Command leaving Colorado Springs.
The mission of U.S. Space Command is to work with Allies and Partners, plan, execute, and integrate military space power into multi-domain global operations to deter aggression, defend national interests, and when necessary, defeat threats.
The back-and-forth battle over the permanent location of Colorado Springs has been ongoing for years. Space Command was re-established in 2019 and based at Schriever Space Force Base. In 2021, President Trump announced it would move to Restone Arsenal in Huntsville before President Biden reversed that decision in 2023 saying the permanent headquarters would stay in Colorado Springs.
An Air Force report found that Huntsville outscored Colorado Springs as the best location for Space Command over Colorado Springs. The report cites Huntsville as providing a large, qualified workforce, quality schools, superior infrastructure capacity, and low initial and recurring costs. The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General evaluated the selection process by the Air Force for the preferred home of Space Command.
"We found that the process Air Force officials used to select Huntsville, Alabama, as the preferred permanent location for the U.S. Space Command headquarters (USSPACECOM HQ) complied with law and policy, and was reasonable in identifying Huntsville as the preferred permanent location," the findings from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General reads.
ECONOMIC IMPACT AND CONCERNS OF MOVING SPACE COMMAND
Dr. Tatiana Bailey, the founder of Data-Driven Economic Strategies in Colorado Springs, is pointing to a number of factors that favor keeping Space Command in Colorado Springs.
"There's the inefficiency of going back and forth," Dr. Bailey explained. "It's, you know, incredibly expensive when you think about moving personnel and moving equipment in some cases, right? But I think we have a different reality from the labor market perspective."
Dr. Bailey has been talking with Colorado lawmakers this week noting there is a "secret" number when it comes to the cost of moving Space Command, but it could cost billions. She also believes the labor market needs to be taken into consideration and points to when Space Command was disestablished and many of those operations moved to STRATCOM in Omaha, Nebraska.
"A lot of active military chose not to move," Dr. Bailey said of the Omaha operations. "Now we have fewer working-age people than we did in the 1990s I mean, think about it, we have 11,000 new retirees a day in the United States.... Colorado has a plethora of jobs because we do relatively well."
Dr. Bailey included the attractiveness of living in the Pikes Peak Region as another topic to consider.
"Not to knock Huntsville," Dr. Bailey said with a smile. "But you know, we've got some attractions. So especially for people who are established here, they're just not going to move at the rate that we probably need them to. From a national security perspective, you have to think about the military clearances and how long those take if you're trying to ramp up new personnel enlistments. Enlistments have fallen 59 percent across all of the military branches since the 1980s so we're not attracting new active military personnel like we used to."
On top of the labor market angle, Dr. Bailey said the cost of moving Space Command while our country is in massive debt is another thing to consider, with the U.S. spending about a trillion dollars each year in just interest rates. The proposed Department of Defense Budget for 2025 is $850 billion.
"I have this pie chart in my presentations that shows what the expenditures are in the U.S." Dr. Bailey stated. "Well, the lion's share goes to Social Security. We're not going to change the number of people who are turning 65 and Medicare... we have to be fiscally prudent in the choices that we make. Now, if there were good strategic reasons for doing this, national security reasons, then you can make an argument that it makes sense. But if anything, the opposite is true, because of the conundrum of fewer working-age people and the difficulty of really ramping up the labor force in Huntsville."
There are about 1,700 personnel who work at Space Command according to the Congressional Research Service. The Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC cited a 2021 report saying Space Command would bring in about $450 million annually to the community, and that didn't include an expected $500 million to $1 billion into military construction. However, construction on new facilities for Space Command in Colorado Springs was put on pause.
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