President Trump on Tuesday declared that U.S. Space Command will move its headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, ending a nearly five-year fight over where the command would be permanently located.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said that Huntsville will take the place of Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado Springs as the command’s headquarters.
“This will result in more than 30,000 Alabama jobs – and probably much more than that – and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and that’s billions because it can’t be millions, that’s billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said. “Most importantly, this decision will help America defend and dominate the high frontier, as they call it”
Space Command – which provides warning of missile launches, defends satellites, and enables satellite-based navigation and troop communication – is seen as a significant prize by both Alabama and Colorado. Elected officials from both sides have insisted their state would be the better location and for years have aggressively lobbied for the right to house the command.
Trump’s decision reverses a Biden administration choice to keep Space Command at its temporary headquarters in Colorado after Trump, during his first term, decided to move it to Alabama. The decision, made in Trump’s final days in the White House, was decried by critics as last-minute favoritism for the heavily red state.
The military’s rationale for the move, however, has been more convoluted.
The Air Force in 2021 identified Army Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville as the preferred location for the command’s permanent headquarters, chosen over five other states due to its infrastructure and costs to the Pentagon.
But a 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) later found the Air Force’s decision-making process had “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.”
Still, then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall reportedly recommended to President Biden that the headquarters still be moved to Alabama.
But Biden in 2023, following the advice of then-head of Space Command Gen. James Dickinson, chose to keep the command in Colorado. His administration argued that it would avoid a gap in readiness and national security given the time and cost to transfer the headquarters from one state to another.
That was followed by an April report by the Department of Defense Inspector General, which “could not determine” the rationale for choosing Colorado. The Air Force had estimated an Alabama headquarters would cost $426 million less due to lower construction and personnel fees.
Huntsville has long been home to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, infrastructure that Alabama lawmakers have insisted make it the better home for Space Command.
But Colorado lawmakers have argued Space Command would lose a significant number of its civilian workers and contractors as they wouldn’t choose to move states, creating a gap in the workforce.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) celebrated the announcement in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published shortly before Trump spoke at the White House.
“U.S. Space Command has had an uncertain future since its bipartisan re-establishment in 2019. Instead of focusing on threats to the nation, U.S. military space power has been caught in a political fight over where its permanent headquarters should be,” Britt wrote.
“While this process has shown Washington at its worst, I am confident Huntsville, Ala., will show our country at its best,” she added.
