House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is pressing DoD and the U.S. Air Force to affirm the 2021 selection of Redstone Arsenal, Ala., as the permanent base for U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM).
The move of the command from Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., “is severely delayed at this point, over two years beyond the point when Air Force made the right decision after scrutinizing multiple locations and considering multiple factors to locate SPACECOM Headquarters in Huntsville, and over a year since the GAO and the DoD Inspector General affirmed Air Force’s decision,” Rogers wrote in a May 19th letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. “Moving expeditiously to locate SPACECOM Headquarters at Redstone Arsenal is in our country’s best national security interests.”
Rogers’ May 19th letter to Austin and Kendall references a May 15th NBC News‘ post that relies on unnamed sources in asserting that “some defense and congressional officials believe the White House is laying the groundwork to halt plans to move U.S. Space Command’s headquarters to Alabama in part because of concerns about the state’s restrictive abortion law, according to two U.S. officials and one U.S. defense official familiar with the discussions.”
The NBC post did not cite evidence, but rather conjecture, including the unnamed officials saying the decision “is all about abortion politics” and that “the belief is they are delaying any move because of the abortion issue.”
Rogers’ letter hit upon the NBC post to back his stance on moving the command to Alabama.
“The Air Force’s deleterious actions concerning the selection of a location for SPACECOM Headquarters require the committee to now seek document preservation in this matter,” the letter said. “Air Force officials have continued to delay finalizing the move of SPACECOM Headquarters to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, in response to apparent politically motivated interference by political appointees in the Biden administration.”
Rogers asks Austin and Kendall “take immediate steps to preserve all records created, referenced, or modified” about the selection of SPACECOM headquarters since Jan. 20, 2021, including all documents and communications with any officials in the Biden administration about the command’s headquarters.
“The decision criteria for Space Command has fundamentally not changed,” Kendall told a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington, D.C., on May 22. “There is nothing in that decision criteria about state laws that might be about abortion or gay rights. That is not part of the decision criteria. It [the decision] has to do with what’s the right place to put the headquarters of Space Command for the U.S. government, period.”
Kendall declined comment on the timing of his decision on Space Command basing.
In the wake of the Chinese balloon overflight of the U.S. in early February, seven Colorado leaders, including Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.)–the chair of the HASC strategic forces panel, urged the Pentagon to keep the SPACECOM headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base (Defense Daily, Feb. 7).
Last year, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report cast doubt on whether credible analysis informed the decision to move SPACECOM to Alabama–a decision made in the waning days of the Trump administration (Defense Daily, June 8, 2022).
Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has suggested that Trump overruled the Air Force’s analysis of Peterson as the best location and forced the selection of Redstone Arsenal in an attempt to court Alabama’s congressional delegation, including freshman Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) and now-retired Sen. Richard Shelby (R), ahead of Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate.
The Department of the Air Force has been conducting a further assessment of the Space Command basing decision in advance of Kendall’s final decision on the matter.