Trump Moves U.S. Space Command to Alabama

President Trump announced today he is moving the headquarters of U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. The decision has been expected since he returned to office, restoring a decision made in his first term, but overturned by President Biden. The battle between Alabama and Colorado has been waged over the past four years on bipartisan grounds, with the state delegations holding firm despite political differences on other issues. Trump said a “big factor” in his decision was that Colorado allows mail-in voting and thus has “corrupt” elections.

Surrounded by members of the Alabama delegation, Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made the announcement in the Oval Office this afternoon.

Trump reestablished U.S. Space Command in August 2019 after a 17-year hiatus. Originally created by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, it was dissolved in 2002 after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that led to a reorganization of the U.S. unified combatant commands.

U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM) is one of the 11 Unified Combatant Commands and separate from the U.S. Space Force, a military service that is part of the Department of the Air Force. The six military services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard) “organize, train, and equip” personnel who are assigned to the unified commands as needed for warfighting.

USSPACECOM’s headquarters were temporarily placed in Colorado Springs near other space components of the Air Force and later the Space Force while the Department of the Air Force went through a laborious process for deciding on a permanent home. A number of states made bids.  Days before leaving office in January 2021, Trump held a meeting with military and other officials in the White House and chose Redstone Arsenal (RSA) in Huntsville as the permanent location, although it was then-Secretary of the Air Force (SecAF) Barbara Barrett who made the official announcement.

The Colorado delegation fervently fought the decision on the basis of “rumors that the Trump White House influenced the decision for political reasons.”  They appealed to Biden to reconsider. After more than two years of intense congressional debate and investigations by the DOD IG and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), on July 31, 2023 Biden decided it would stay in Colorado Springs. The announcement was made by the Pentagon press secretary.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) vowed “this fight is far from over.”  In September 2023, he held a hearing where then-SecAF Frank Kendall acknowledged he thought he’d be the one making the decision, but Biden decided to do it. Kendall said he favored Huntsville. Gen. James Dickinson, USSPACECOM Commander at the time, also testified and said he wanted to keep it in Colorado Springs.

Rogers demanded another DOD investigation and said several times that once Trump was back in office, Biden’s decision would be reversed.

On April 15, 2025, DOD’s IG office released another report dated April 11, but which apparently had been completed a year earlier, supporting Huntsville because it has a $426 million cost advantage due to “lower personnel costs and construction savings.”  An announcement by Trump relocating USSPACECOM to Huntsville has been anticipated ever since.

Colorado advocates claim Trump’s original decision was politically motivated. Alabama advocates claim Biden’s decision was politically motivated.

For his part, Trump said today his decision this time was based largely on the fact that Colorado allows mail-in voting.

I am thrilled to report that the U.S. Space Command headquarters will move to the beautiful locale of a place called Huntsville, Alabama. … We love Alabama. I only won it by about 47 points. I don’t think that influenced my decision. But we had a lot of competition for this and Alabama is getting it. …

We initially selected Huntsville for the SPACECOM headquarters, yet those plans were wrongfully obstructed by the Biden Administration and as you know they moved them to a different locale. And today we’re moving forward with what we wanted to do, in the place we want to have this, and this will be there for hopefully hundreds of years. That’s where it’s going to be.

I will say, I want to thank Colorado. The problem I had 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. And we can’t have that. When a state is for mail-in voting, that means they want dishonest elections, because that’s what that means. So that played a big factor.” — Donald Trump

He went on to say that Hunstville will play “a key role in building Golden Dome,” the missile defense shield he proposed earlier this year, and “result in more than 30,000 Alabama jobs” and “hundreds of billions of dollars of investment.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said choosing Huntsville “will save taxpayers $480 million.” USSPACECOM will be co-located at Redstone Arsenal along with other government installations including NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the FBI, and the Missile Defense Agency, and he hinted it will be named after the President.

Thank you, Mr. President, for this, and we look forward to building a huge Space Command and having the Donald J. Trump Space Command Center in Huntsville, Alabama.”  — Sen. Tommy Tuberville