TAMPA, Florida — The Space Coast of Florida is one of six locations selected as the potential permanent home of Space Command, the Department of Defense command designed to defend U.S. space assets.
“Space Command is an operational combatant command, and Florida’s clearly good at that,” Dale Ketcham, vice president for government and external relations for advocacy group Space Florida, told the Washington Examiner ahead of the decision.
Tampa Bay’s MacDill Air Force Base currently hosts U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, while Miami is home to U.S. Southern Command.
The Air Force selected Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, home of Space Force’s 45th Space Wing, as the sole Florida bid to make the cut.
“Florida’s Space Coast is the 21st-Century answer for what will give our nation and warfighters the edge on this 21st-Century battlefield,” Lynda Weatherman, president and CEO of the Economic Development Commission of Florida’s Space Coast, said in a statement given to the Washington Examiner.
“Our unmatched quantity and quality of defense, civil and commercial space assets and expertise offer U.S. Space Command the agility, innovation and boldness needed to project spacepower,” she added.
Watchers had thought that Colorado Springs’s Peterson Air Force Base, the command’s current temporary home, would be a shoo-in for the permanent base.
Ketcham said if SPACECOM is to develop its own culture, it needs to leave Colorado.
“As a new service, empowering it to truly develop its own culture is going to be an essential part of it getting started,” he said. “That’s going to be a real challenge for Space Command if it’s living in the shadow of the Air Force there in Colorado.”
Besides Peterson and Patrick, the Department of the Air Force selected four other candidates to host the command, including Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, Port San Antonio, Texas, and Redstone Army Airfield, Alabama.
In all, 24 states threw in bids for the headquarters.
The Air Force will now conduct virtual and on-site visits at each location to assess the one that is best suited to host America’s 11th combatant command. Infrastructure, mission, community support, and cost to the DOD will all be factors.
A decision is expected in early 2021.
