President Donald Trump’s Sept. 2 decision to move U.S. Space Command to Huntsville, Alabama, delivered a setback for the Colorado Springs economy, but local officials expect the city will remain a key player in space.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colorado Springs, says Space Command announced that about 1,000 people — 600 civilian and 400 military — will be included in the move to Huntsville, but the transition could take at least three years and perhaps up to five years before a permanent facility at Redstone Arsenal is ready. That doesn’t mean all the civilian workers will make the move, especially those near the end of their careers.
“We don’t know how many (civilian employees) will actually move. We can’t have Space Command scrambling for civilian employees because they don’t have (enough) skilled workers there,” Crank says. “There will be a lot of people who, given the choice of moving, will find another job (locally) that probably pays more. That will be taxing the Alabama workforce base. We will have to see how it plays out.”
Crank says Air Force officials told him that only the headquarters part of the command will make the move; other parts, in Colorado Springs and in six other states, that have operations missions likely will remain in their current locations.
Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said during a roundtable discussion in September that he expects about 280 Space Command positions would move annually for five years and about half of the civilian workers will relocate to Huntsville, based on the percentage of workforce that made the move with Army Material Command in 2005 from Virginia to Huntsville. He said those jobs would move and be filled locally.
Martin Traylor, deputy to the garrison commander at Redstone Arsenal, said during the roundtable that a temporary location for the command could be ready in two years, allowing it to return to operational status within three years.
Robert Beletic, aerospace and defense manager for the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, says up to 90% of the command’s civilians could decline to make the move because they have deep roots in Colorado.
Tatiana Bailey, executive director of Data Driven Economic Strategies, a Colorado Springs economic consulting firm, calls the move “a pretty big hit,” including the impact of defense contractors working for or with the command that might also move. However, she says the economic impact will not be a doomsday scenario because too many military installations and missions will remain in the area.
A summary of defense spending by state from the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation said spending on defense contracts in El Paso County totaled $2.9 billion in the 2023 fiscal year — more than one-third of the statewide total and an 11.5% increase in five years. The nearly 30,000 department personnel in the county spent $3.3 billion in the 2023 fiscal year, more than 80% of the state total and up nearly 18% in five years.
“I believe that for every job lost with the Space Command move, Colorado will get much more than one job in the space economy because the aerospace industry is growing so fast,” 26% in the past five years, Beletic says.
Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, CEO of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce & EDC, says none of the 12 defense and aerospace contractors that have announced plans to expand in Colorado Springs during the past three years has scaled back those plans. Two days after Trump announced the command’s move, space and missile defense contractor Mobius announced plans to expand to Colorado Springs with 75 employees.
“Colorado Springs is still a major location for cyber and aerospace and we continue to tell our story — 95 local business leaders were in Washington, D.C., in September doing that — and we are being aggressive about locating other [military] assets into the community,” Reeder Kleymeyer says. “The chamber just launched the Colorado Aerospace Defense Council to bring new aerospace and defense companies to the region.”
Crank and the rest of Colorado’s congressional delegation continue to fight the move, but the first-term congressman says he is focusing more on pushing the Trump administration to move other military missions and units to Colorado Springs. The city could play a major role in the biggest among those opportunities: the Trump administration’s $175 billion Golden Dome missile defense system.
“We should know the architecture [of Golden Dome] by the end of the month and then we could start seeing pieces of that come to Colorado Springs,” Crank says. “I will do what I can to help Colorado [by] working with the administration as it decides where Golden Dome goes and making sure Colorado is an attractive place [for that]. We have to decide how much we want to anger the president or [instead] bring other elements here.”
Crank, Reeder Kleymeyer and other local officials also are focusing on keeping a much larger command in Colorado Springs — the U.S. Space Force Space Operations Command (soon to be renamed Combat Forces Command) — that employs about 15,000 people locally and continues to expand. Reeder Kleymeyer also pointed out that command, unlike Space Command, awards many contracts that draw defense contractors to the area.
Space Force also launched a new Delta of its Los Angeles-based Space Systems Command at Peterson Space Force Base on Aug. 8 to monitor space for threats and operational safety and could get another. Beletic says Space Force will continue to grow and much of that growth likely will be in Colorado, since half of its bases and 60% of its assets are located in the state.
He believes someday a space launch facility will be built in Colorado, likely east of Colorado Springs, because of the state’s favorable weather, available land, clear air space and talented workforce.
Northern Command, another major command based in Colorado Springs, has already taken on one new mission. It will be the lead “synchronizer” to counter hostile unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, in the U.S. The command, which employs nearly 1,300 people, also could have a major role in operating the Golden Dome system and may take on more roles as new weapon systems are developed, officials say.
“I am confident that when the dust settles, our community will have more jobs and more Department of Defense missions than today,” Crank said in a statement when Trump announced the move.
Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade said in a statement after the announcement that he remains hopeful and “the space enterprise is growing rapidly, and Colorado Springs, already a global leader in space, will continue to see new opportunities for expansion and growth of our military capacity. Our existing space assets position us well for the next chapter in America’s space story.”