Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and seven House members from Ohio are advising the Biden administration and DoD to choose Wright-Patterson AFB as the permanent headquarters for U.S. Space Command.
“Should the administration reconsider the next location for U.S. Space Command, and as the Department of the Air Force identifies the best locations for U.S. Space Force units, we believe it
makes sense for the command to be located within proximity of both U.S. Air Force and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in addition to leading international,
research institutions,” according to the legislators’ June 6th letter to President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, and Chief of Space Operations B. Chance Saltzman.
“The state of Ohio is ideally suited to host U.S. Space Command and Space Force units,” the legislators said. “It meets these criteria, and for these reasons, we urge you to locate the U.S. Space Command permanent headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Dayton and to partner Space Force with NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center (GRC), including Lewis Field in Cleveland and the Armstrong Test Facility (ATF) in Sandusky.”
Brown and Ohio Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D), a member of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel; David Joyce (R); Max Miller (R); Joyce Beatty (D); Shontel Brown (D); Emilia Strong Sykes (D); and Greg Landsman (D) signed the letter.
“WPAFB and NASA exceed the key criteria listed in the original strategic basing process for the U.S. Space Command headquarters – specifically the capacity requirements for space, housing, and parking, and the relatively low cost of construction,” according to the June 6 missive.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that the Trump administration’s January 2021 decision to transfer U.S. Space Command from its temporary headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., to Redstone Arsenal, Ala., contradicted inputs from U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, the head of Space Command, then Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, and then Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. John Hyten, all of whom favored keeping Space Command at Peterson to allow the command to reach full operational capability more quickly.
Then Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett announced the decision to move the command to Redstone on Jan. 13, 2021–a day after the House impeached Trump for a second time in the wake of his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol. GAO has said that, while the Air Force documented its general rationale for choosing Redstone in an action memorandum and accompanying documents, “there was not consensus among the officials we interviewed regarding who ultimately made the decision to name Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location for U.S. Space Command headquarters, including the role of the then President [Trump] in making the decision.”
Barrett met with Trump at the White House on Jan. 11, 2021, but she has declined to reveal what they discussed, and the Pentagon Inspector General said that it has not found notes or a transcript of that meeting.
Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has suggested that Trump overruled the Department of 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.
Kendall has been reviewing the Space Command basing decision, but he has declined to say when he may come to a final judgment.
Ohio did not have an entry on the list of bases considered by the Department of the Air Force in 2020 for a permanent Space Command headquarters. The possible locations included Peterson and Redstone, Kirtland AFB, N.M.; Offutt AFB, Neb.; Patrick Space Force Base, Fla.; and Port San Antonio, Texas.
As Ohio throws its hat in the ring, House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is pressing DoD and the Air Force to affirm the 2021 selection of Redstone as the permanent base for Space Command (Defense Daily, May 23).
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 Austin and Kendall. “Moving expeditiously to locate SPACECOM Headquarters at Redstone Arsenal is in our country’s best national security interests.”
In a June 8 Senate floor speech, Brown said that basing Space Command at Wright-Patterson would leverage the aerospace talent in Ohio, including General Electric‘s [GE] aviation subsidiary outside Cincinnati, the Space Force’s intelligence arm–the National Space Intelligence Center–at Wright-Patterson in Dayton, and NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
“With the CHIPS Act, we are bringing 10,000 good-paying, high-tech jobs to central Ohio making semiconductors,” Brown said on June 8th. “We are already the center of the country for aerospace jobs. We are going to be a major hub for semiconductors and manufacturing. Locating our space military leadership near the domestic hub of both semiconductors and aerospace innovation is good for Ohio’s economy, and it makes sense for our military.”