The yearslong fight over the permanent home of U.S. Space Command — currently in Colorado Springs but in danger of being moved to Alabama — kicked into a higher gear Thursday, as the state’s Republican members of Congress said the battle was hardly over.
“We’re not waiting to make our case,” U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank said in an early morning video call with reporters. “We’re making our case and we’re doing it right now. We’re going to continue to fight — it makes sense that it be in Colorado. It’s already in Colorado.”
Crank is a freshman who represents the 5th Congressional District where Peterson Space Force Base, home to Space Command, sits. He was joined by Reps. Lauren Boebert, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd, who spoke from an office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Members of Alabama’s congressional delegation have been spinning a different story this week, with U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers saying on a podcast that contractors are “ready to turn dirt” on a future Space Command headquarters at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.
Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Auburn University’s “Cyber Focus” podcast Tuesday that he expected a final decision from the Trump administration this month.
“We do expect it to be announced right after the Air Force secretary is named,” he said.
President Donald Trump in January nominated former air crewman and space expert Troy Meink to lead the Air Force. He hasn’t been confirmed to the post yet.
But Colorado’s Republicans were hopeful that no move would happen.
“I’ve asked many of our senior military leaders: What is the military value of moving Space Command out of Colorado Springs?” Crank said Thursday. “And, point blank, they say there isn’t any.”
Evans, who represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District and is an Army veteran, said he was encouraged by the fact that Trump didn’t immediately move Space Command upon taking office nearly three months ago — as was predicted by Rogers shortly after the November election.
“There were a lot of rumors swirling that this was going to be one of those first executive orders dropped on Jan. 20,” Evans said. “As we all know, there was no executive order on Day 1 talking about Space Command.”
Space Command, which is responsible for the nation’s military operations in outer space, was revived in 2019 under Trump’s first administration. Located first in Colorado Springs, it was set to move to Alabama after Trump announced that state as his selection for a permanent headquarters in the waning days of his first administration in early 2021.
But former President Joe Biden later reversed that decision and the command remained in Colorado. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimates it supports nearly 1,400 jobs and has a $1 billion impact on the local economy.
Huntsville, home to some of the earliest missiles used in the nation’s space programs, scored higher than Colorado Springs in a Government Accountability Office assessment of potential locations for the command. That same office, however, gave the selection process low marks for documentation, credibility and impartiality and said that senior U.S. officials who were interviewed conveyed that remaining in Colorado Springs “would allow U.S. Space Command to reach full operational capability as quickly as possible.”
With rising military threats from Russia and China, Boebert said Thursday that it was “even more critical for Space Command to avoid being moved across the country.”
The minimum $2 billion price tag to relocate the command would undermine the priorities the administration has set with its budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency office.
“It really flies in the face of the DOGE operations that are taking place,” the congresswoman said on the call.
The Republican delegation on Monday sent a letter to the White House outlining Colorado’s position on the issue. They wrote that a move to Alabama “would introduce unnecessary risks, disrupt established operations and waste valuable resources.”
The state’s Democratic members of Congress, along with both of the state’s Democratic U.S. senators, have also been vocal about keeping the Space Command in Colorado.
On Thursday’s call, Crank said that with the president’s announcement during his first week back in office of the creation of the Golden Dome missile defense system — a futuristic network of U.S. weapons in space designed to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch — it’s all the more critical to keep Space Command in Colorado.
“We have to have this seamless coordination between (Colorado Springs-based) Northern Command and Space Command, especially if we’re going to be successful implementing Golden Dome,” he said. “They literally share the same parking lot at Peterson Space Force Base, so I believe there would be a great loss in capability there.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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