S.A. does not land the Space Command
Disappointing five other finalists that included the Alamo City, the Air Force said Wednesday that pending a final analysis, Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., will be the new home of the U.S. Space Command.
San Antonio and Colorado Springs, Colo., were considered two of the top candidates to serve as the new headquarters after the Pentagon
whittled down a list of 50 cities around the country competing for Space Command to just six.
The command has been provisionally headquartered in Colorado Springs since its inception.
“Huntsville compared more favorably than the other candidates based on the analysis,” Air Force spokesman Ann Stefanek said.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg
and other local leaders met Dec. 21 with a Pentagon site selection team that was expected to decide on one of the six cities.
Other locations were Patrick AFB near Cocoa Beach, Fla.; Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, N.M.; Offutt AFB in Omaha, Neb.; and Redstone Army Airfield in Huntsville, Ala.
Nirenberg issued a statement Wednesday saying San Antonio “was honored to be among the finalists” for the headquarters.
He added, “The process enabled us to highlight our many assets and attributes, including our cybersecurity, medical and training missions, as well as Port San Antonio,” which “ensured that we remain on the Pentagon’s short list as a welcoming, well-positioned home for our existing military missions as well as future missions.
“We will be continuing the conversations with military leaders and our local partners working toward future opportunities.”
That Huntsville was the winner surprised a number of people — one of them Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.
“I thought that if it was going anywhere it would come here. But I thought it would stay in Colorado,” he said.
Richard Perez, president and CEO of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, said Huntsville was something of a dark horse candidate and noted that conventional wisdom had Colorado Springs as the likely winner.
“We thought the No. 1 spot, the place to beat, was in Colorado,” he said. “We thought that that’s where pulling them out of there and folks have been living there and have their families, we thought that would be the hard one to beat.
“But I would agree that Huntsville is a bit of a surprise, although, on reflection, they’ve got the U.S. space and rocket center there. So
there is, certainly, some synergy to what Space Command brings to the table and all the training that they’re doing and that sort of thing,” he said.
The Air Force said it conducted virtual and on-site visits to assess to determine which of the finalists would be best suited to host the Space Command.
The command will remain in Colorado Springs until Huntsville is able to support the mission. The Air Force said it’s likely to make a final decision for locating the headquarters in spring 2023, pending the results from a required environmental impact analysis.
An Air Force statement said, “Huntsville compared favorably across more of these factors than any other community, providing a large, qualified workforce, quality schools, superior infrastructure capacity, and low initial and recurring costs. Additionally, Redstone Arsenal offered a facility to support
the headquarters, at no cost, while the permanent facility is being constructed.”
A Pentagon team already had visited San Antonio as well as Colorado Springs, where Peterson AFB was thought by some familiar with the competition to have the inside track, though Nirenberg pushed back hard on that idea.
“It’s certainly true the command is presently in Colorado and that the (Air Force) Academy is in Colorado. But look, the future of cyberspace in the military is right here in San Antonio,” the mayor said at the time.
“The center of military medicine is here in San Antonio,” he continued. “The birthplace of human beings in flight and in space is here in San Antonio, Military City, U.S.A., and all of the intangibles that belong to a community that embraces our national defense apparatus is here in San Antonio.”
Space Command was established as the 11th combat command
in August 2019 and currently has about 1,400 military and civilian personnel.
It operates just like the Central Command, a unified command with forces from the various military branches oversaw wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The difference is that its domain is space.
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-ala., said Wednesday that “Redstone Arsenal’s selection is a testament to our excellent quality of life, low cost of living, high-quality local school systems, skilled workforce, Redstone’s geographical space for new facilities and existing wealth of national security expertise.”
However, he also cautioned the Pentagon’s “announcement is akin to a business acquisition’s ‘Letter of Intent,’” pending the outcome of the environmental analysis.
“While Secretary of the Air Force Barrett emphasized to me that her location decision was based solely on merit and the interests of national security, it is unknown whether her merit-based decision will hold up and be respected by the Biden/harris administration and Congress,” Brooks said.
Asked if politics might have driven the decision, Wolff recalled the intervention of Sen. Richard Shelby, R-ala., when plans called for sending some people quarantined for coronavirus last March at Joint Base San Antonio-lackland to Alabama.
“They were going to send some of the people that were coming here, they were going to put them in Alabama, and … Shelby’s the one that said, ‘Nope, they’re not coming here.’ So yeah, he’s got a lot of power, but I have no idea what goes into the decision,” Wolff said. “You never know, you never know, unless you’re in on the inner circle.”
Space Command is separate from U.S. Space Force, also established last year as a new branch of the military. Space Force will organize, train and equip troops the Pentagon calls “space professionals,” and is headquartered at the Pentagon with the other major military branches.
City leaders had touted several sites here for Space Command, among them Jbsa-lackland and the former Brooks AFB, now a commercial development, before the Pentagon put the Port on its short list. The National Security Agency also has a large facility here.
San Antonio’s advantage was the city’s ability to provide a facility at “commercial speed and commercial prices,” rather than relying on military construction funding approved by Congress, said Jim Perschbach, CEO of Port San Antonio.
Nirenberg had stressed San Antonio’s historic role in the manned space program as one reason why it has a good shot at the command, saying he thought the military’s future was in the Alamo City.