President-elect Donald Trump isn’t expected to waste any time going through with the plan to move Space Command headquarters out of Colorado Springs to Alabama.
Space Command employs about 1,200 people and draws not just on Space Force capability, but also from across the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Navy. It has been the center of a years-long controversy about whether to put its headquarters in Colorado or Alabama. Trump has favored the deep-red Alabama, while Biden favored the deep-blue Colorado. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5 that Trump would settle the dispute as one of his first moves in office.
“President Trump said in the campaign that he was going to reverse that decision if elected,” he said, referring to Biden’s decision to move the headquarters to Colorado. “But I knew he would because if you remember, not only did Alabama win two nationwide competitions, but President Trump’s secretary of the Air Force recommended Huntsville, President Biden’s secretary of the Air Force recommended Huntsville, and then Biden took it away for political reasons.”
“But it’s going to be a big point now because President Trump’s already announced it, and I think you’ll see in the first week that he’s in office, he’ll sign an executive order reversing Biden’s directive,” he continued. “And we will start construction next year in Huntsville.”
The office of Rep.-elect Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs, expressed its opposition to the prospect.
“He’s definitely against the move,” a spokesman for Crank told the Washington Examiner.
Speaking with Al.com, Crank pledged to “resist any attempt” to move the headquarters to Alabama. He also issued some rare criticism of the president-elect by an elected Republican.
“With Donald Trump, you never know,” he said. “He changes his positions and his stance on issues by the day, and sometimes by the hour. If he wants to build out the Space Force and Space Command and have it meet the national security moment and our threats, then he will keep it here.”
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A spokeswoman for Sen. Michael Bennet D.- Colo. said he would also work to keep Space Command in Colorado Springs.
“Colorado is the rightful home for Space Command. Our state’s space and military assets are critical to America’s national security, and Colorado is the best place for our service members and their families to train, live, work, and retire. No matter who is in the White House, Sen. Bennet will keep fighting for the nearly 58,000 members of Colorado’s military community,” Larkin Parker said, in a statement.
The Biden administration always defended its move to keep the headquarters in Colorado Springs as a purely national security-focused move, without any political considerations. Its main argument was the perceived threat to readiness.
A senior White House official told The Gazette last year that Biden primarily considered the “impact a move would have to operational readiness to confront space-enabled threats during a critical time in this dynamic security environment. U.S. Space Command headquarters will achieve ‘full operational capability’ at Colorado Springs later this month. Maintaining the headquarters there maintains operational readiness and ensures no disruption to its mission or to its personnel.”
A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner at the time of Biden’s decision that a new site in Alabama would not open until “the early to mid-2030s.”
Space Command is separate from the Space Force and provides combatant commanders with support such as weather monitoring; space control; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; position, navigation and timing; satellite communications; and missile warning, according to previous Gazette reporting.
The command is focused on the area 62 miles above the Earth, above the realm of spy balloons, but in an area beset with space junk and a rapidly growing number of satellites, particularly from political rivals such as China. The command supports 680 organizations flying 7,500 satellites, Space Command head Gen. James Dickinson said in previous written testimony to Congress.
The command operates a 24/7 operations center that tracks and reports major space incidents. For example, the center tracked Russia’s direct-ascent anti-satellite missile test in November 2021 that generated more than 1,500 pieces of orbital debris.
Since the August announcement, defense companies such as Boecore and Infinity Systems Engineering have announced major expansion plans.
The Gazette’s Mary Shinn contributed to this story.
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Publish date : 2024-11-12 02:00:00
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