READY AND WAITING
Aerospace industry in Southern California may benefit from Trump’s ‘space force’
WASHINGTON—One of the big winners from President Donald Trump’s push for a new military service called “space force” may be one of his least favorite places—California.
Once the launchpad of the nation’s aerospace industry, Southern California stands to see a surge in government and industry jobs and billions of dollars in contracts for satellites and other technology if Congress approves the space force when it takes up the proposal next year, industry experts and former military officials said.
“You can’t just go out in the middle of Iowa and try to create a center for space,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a retired Air Force officer. “So Southern California is very well situated” to get substantial benefits.
The extent of the benefits would depend on where the headquarters is located, how much is spent on new satellites and other space systems, and how many people and programs now in the Air Force and other existing armed services might be shifted to the new force.
Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis said last week that planners have just begun preparing cost estimates. “We’ve already commenced the effort, but I don’t want to give you an off-the-cuff number,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.
The biggest uncertainty is whether Trump or Congress would try to direct the rewards to other states. The president has visited California only once since taking office, and his administration has warred with Sacramento on fuel efficiency standards, clean air regulations, firefighting techniques and more.
“Southern California remains the largest concentration of space technology, including military space technology, in the United States,” said Loren Thompson, aerospace analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank, which receives money from major industry players, including Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.
“But when you set up a new military service, you increase the impact of politics in ways that might not necessarily be good for California,” he added.
Colorado and Florida, which also boast extensive civilian and military aerospace facilities, could be big winners too.
The White House says it will unveil its plan for a space force early next year. For now, the Pentagon is taking interim steps, including creation of a Space Command in the Air Force to centralize planning for war fighting in space.
Congressional approval of Trump’s idea for a futuristic armed force for space is by no means certain. Key lawmakers, some Pentagon officials and senior commanders, especially in the Air Force, fear losing responsibility and budgetary authority for space.
Pentagon officials say building the space force as a sixth armed service—alongside the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard—is likely to cost billions of dollars for uniforms, vehicles, buildings, training facilities, communications and all the other administrative trappings of a new command structure and personnel.
Lawmakers who support the space force idea say one of their goals is to hike Pentagon spending on acquisition of satellites and other space systems. Some of that money is virtually certain to flow through Southern California’s burgeoning aerospace sector.
Another beneficiary is likely to be the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo, Calif., a facility with more than 5,000 military and civilian personnel. It has an unclassified annual budget of about $7 billion—out of a total Air Force budget of $8.5 billion for building and launching satellites and other space systems—and an unknown classified budget.
If a space force is created, the El Segundo center is likely to be shifted into the new service, current and former officials say, to take advantage of decades of experience at building and overseeing satellites.
That could boost employment at the center, which has seen its workforce drop to its lowest in two decades, according to a 2017 study by the Pentagon’s Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation that was provided to Congress.
The local expertise also will make it difficult to shift the center’s mission to an entirely new facility or organization in another state, its supporters say.
“You can’t just up and move all these rocket scientists and very smart individuals, because they’re not going to move,” said Lieu. “They’ll retire.”
California is also home to Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, a key military facility for satellite launches and home to a missile defense battery.
Industry stalwarts such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co. all have crucial facilities in the state, as do commercial space firms including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, which has recently increased its share of national security launch awards.
“Those companies and those areas that already have established space presence and the ability to develop things in space are going to be the first places that probably would benefit,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, who held several Pentagon acquisition jobs before retiring last year.