Despite multiple evaluations carried out by the U.S. Air Force over three years – all of which found that Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal was the preferred choice for U.S. Space Command headquarters – former President Joe Biden used his presidential discretion to select Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the location, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
The report, released Thursday, tracks the Air Force’s decision-making process and judges whether it followed established guidelines in deciding where to locate Space Command.
A similar report released in 2022, after the initial announcement that Huntsville was the preferred choice for the new military installation, found that the process had failed to adequately follow 14 of 21 guidelines. That finding prompted the Air Force to re-evaluate its selection.
Between mid-2022 and July 2023, when Biden made his announcement, the Air Force’s new evaluation process found on multiple occasions that Huntsville remained its preferred choice due to a variety of factors. The most notable was the cost, which would save taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars over the next 10 years.
The updated evaluation was handed over to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in October 2022, with an announcement expected from him in November. It never came. Instead, another evaluation was conducted. Those results were the same and were ready in June 2023.
“A senior Air Force official told us he believed the final basing decision would be made by then Secretary of the Air Force (Frank) Kendall after his receipt of the site visit report on June 12, 2023, but no decision was made,” the GAO report reads. “On June 30, 2023, the Air Force submitted documents to the House Armed Services Committee which stated that Huntsville, Alabama remained the preferred location based on previously approved decision criteria.
“On July 31, 2023, DOD announced that then President Joseph Biden had selected Colorado Springs, Colorado as the permanent location for U.S. Space Command headquarters.”
Kendall initially said he delayed the announcement that Huntsville would be the permanent location to avoid interfering with the midterm elections.
He then didn’t announce the results in the spring of 2023 due to the unexpected announcement that Space Command had reached “full operational capacity” in Colorado Springs — nearly two years earlier than expected. With that being the case, Kendall ordered another evaluation to determine what a move to Huntsville would mean for the operations of Space Command, and also asked for a cost analysis that included a variety of factors.
That new evaluation ended the same as the rest, with Huntsville as the preferred choice.
When pressed for an explanation for why Colorado Springs was selected, Air Force officials told GAO that the decision was based on “disruptions to operational readiness.” Those officials, GAO said in the report, maintained that despite evaluations showing that mitigation efforts were in place to offset those disruptions, the disruptions outweighed the cost savings. The report notes that those officials could not provide documentation to support those assertions, nor could they explain the process by which they came to that conclusion.
Likewise, the GAO requested information from the White House, Department of Defense and the Air Force on the rationale behind Biden’s decision but did not receive any.
When fully operational in a few years, Space Command is expected to employ nearly 2,000 military personnel and hundreds more independent contractors. It is also expected to grow rapidly in size over the next decade, as technology advances and space becomes a new focal point for the military.
The decision to remain in Colorado Springs appears to be hampering that growth to a degree. According to the GAO report, “The Command is fully operational, but U.S. Space Command officials told GAO that they faced ongoing personnel, facilities, and communications challenges. As a result of identified challenges, officials stated the Command’s posture is not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed to support the headquarters’ operations in Colorado Springs, Colorado.”
