US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will relocate the US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, noting the southern state's strong support for him while criticising Colorado's voting practices.
The move, first reported by Reuters, benefits a state that overwhelmingly supported Trump's three Republican presidential bids, at the expense of one that opposed them.
"We love Alabama. I only won it by about 47 points. I don't think that influenced my decision, though," Trump told reporters and lawmakers gathered in the Oval Office.
The decision reverses a move made under former President Joe Biden's administration, which had selected Colorado Springs as the permanent home for the military's newest combatant command.
Defence officials have previously estimated that relocating the headquarters, which became fully operational in December 2023, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take three to four years to complete.
The Space Command, established in 2019 under the first Trump administration, is responsible for military operations beyond Earth's atmosphere and defending US satellites from potential threats. About 1,700 personnel work at Space Command, according to congressional records.
Trump has often linked federal funding decisions and politics. The president previously blocked a move to put the FBI's headquarters in Maryland, calling it a "liberal state", and suggested linking disaster aid in California to the state's policy decisions.
"The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting. They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections," Trump said. Citizens can vote in person or by mail in Colorado.
All of Colorado's congressional leaders said in a joint statement, "Moving Space Command sets our space defence apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea." Four of Colorado's representatives are Republicans.
Huntsville, home to Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center and a major hub for defence contractors, such as L3Harris and Lockheed Martin, has long lobbied for the Space Command headquarters.
Military basing decisions have long been wielded as political weapons in Washington, with lawmakers treating defence installations and equipment purchases as bargaining chips.
In 2021, a week before the end of Trump's first term, the Air Force announced Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, as the preferred location for Space Command's permanent headquarters, pending an environmental assessment. But while the Air Force completed the assessment in 2022, it did not make a final decision regarding Space Command’s headquarters.
The Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan research arm, released a report in 2022 saying it had identified "significant shortfalls" in the Air Force's selection process for the Space Command headquarters.
An April report by the Pentagon's inspector general "acknowledged risks to readiness inherent to moving the HQ from its provisional location" to Huntsville but said it was balanced by an estimated $426m (R7.52bn) cost advantage Huntsville has due to lower personnel and construction costs.
Reuters
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