Colorado may lose its status as the home of the U.S. Space Command headquarters, and with it millions of dollars in base facility construction projects.
In the latest twist in a years-long battle between the Centennial State and Alabama to secure the Space Command’s operations, a congressman has said that he thinks Donald Trump in his first week as president will announce a new location for the specialized force.
“He’ll sign an executive order reversing Biden’s directive,” Alabama Republican Representative Mike Rogers remarked this week, according to The Hill publication.
And after doing so, continued Rogers, who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, construction work in Huntsville will soon be underway.
The possible Space Command move to Huntsville has been applauded by the Alabama Political Reporter, which has pointed out that the Alabama city “boasts unmatched aerospace expertise, military infrastructure, and a workforce purpose-built for space-based defense.”
The battle over which state will ultimately be the permanent home to the Space Command has played out for at least six years at the highest levels of government, with President Biden indicating a preference for it to remain where it is now, at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
The Space Command has been operating at Peterson since December of 2023. The base also hosted a previous version of the Space Command for 17 years, ending in 2002.
Moving the base to the Redstone Army Airfield in Alabama, said Colorado Democrat Governor Jared Polis in a statement last summer, “would cost American taxpayers potentially billions of dollars and would be fiscally irresponsible.”
The Space Command’s Colorado Springs facility has been a slowly evolving operation, notes the Colorado Springs Gazette, that now has “the correct infrastructure, and the right command processes and functions.”
A statement issued from the offices of Colorado Democrat Senator Michael Bennet said, “Colorado is the rightful home for the Space Command,” adding also that Colorado is “the best place for our service members and their families to train, live, work, and retire.”
It is not known exactly when Trump will make a final official decision on the Space Command’s permanent home.
November 14, 2024
By Garry Boulard
