For the next six years, the nation’s newest military branch will be run out of Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. After that, the Space Force may be relocated to another state entirely.
Relocation would be a detriment to the nation’s security and finances.
It’s obvious why Coloradans want the Space Force to remain in their state. For one, it’s pretty cool. But, as the Washington Examiner‘s sister publication The Gazette editorialized, the Space Force will bring billions of dollars in annual investment. And for full disclosure, it should be noted that Washington Examiner owner Philip Anschutz has business interests in Colorado, including in Colorado Springs. Considering Sen. Cory Gardner’s tight reelection battle, there’s also a hint of politics in President Trump’s support for the Space Force’s six-year Colorado window.
Regardless, we and our allies would ultimately benefit from the Space Force remaining in the Centennial State.
First off, Colorado has the best match of preexisting military capabilities to allow the Space Force to thrive. Colorado is already home to the Air Force Academy and three space wings based out of Peterson, Buckley, and Schriever air bases. While it would be opportune for taxpayers were one of those bases closed and its operations transferred to the others, the state’s existing infrastructure would support long-term Space Force operations.
The Air Force Academy’s Colorado Springs location is also valuable. The Air Force needs to persuade more of its best and brightest to pursue space officer career tracks rather than flight officer tracks. If it remains where it is now, the Space Force will be more easily able to show off its career opportunities to young cadets. Quite frankly, it would have been better had the Space Force never been created in the first place and that the Air Force instead retained its Space Command. But what’s done is done. We need to make the best of it.
The question of cost must be central, here.
The Space Force relies on a foundation of extremely expensive secure and redundant command, communication, sensor, strike, and security platforms. But were the Space Force relocated six years from now, those capabilities would have to be built up at a new cost to the taxpayer. Considering the coronavirus injection of new trillions into the national debt, that proposition is now even more concerning.
Some in Congress get this.
As one of the masterminds behind the Space Force, Tennessee Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper, put it, “This is worse than a boondoggle; it’s a moondoggle. … There are only a handful of states that have the qualifications to compete for Space Force [field headquarters], so to tempt 45 other states during a time of record unemployment is senseless and cruel. Some states might even try to use pandemic funding to compete for the new headquarters.”
Cooper is correct. This is standard-fare Pentagon cronyism. Attempting to keep members of Congress from other states off the Air Force’s back, the service is dangling before them the prospect of Space Force investment. New bases, after all, bring big bucks to local communities.
But only Alabama’s Redstone Arsenal and California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base have the infrastructure to mitigate any reasonable portion of the relocation costs. And Redstone’s space-related infrastructure cannot compete with Colorado’s. Vandenberg poses its own difficulties.
A familiar concern? Cost. The data suggest that Colorado Springs housing is, on average, 58% cheaper than that in Los Angeles, and general living costs are 40% lower. Moving operations to Vandenberg would drive up long-term operating costs for the Space Force, something the military already faces a growing crisis with in relation to healthcare costs in particular.
Another issue is Vandenberg’s threat vulnerability. The base’s West Coast location just north of Los Angeles makes it more vulnerable to a conventional attack in a war. Chinese and Russian strike capabilities in the fields of hypersonics, space, and naval operations are advancing in threat. Whether we’re talking about six years or 25 years from now, the old utility of strategic depth will rediscover outsize value. Keeping the Space Force in Colorado will make it harder to target the force and will keep it more easily defended across the intercept-stage range of ballistic missile threats. On that note, Colorado Springs’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex, for example, offers the Space Force a hardened command center in the event of a major conflict. As kinetic-strike weapons (nonwarhead velocity-based) become a reality, mountain bunkers will find renewed importance.
So, ultimately, this really isn’t that complicated. Colorado’s existing infrastructure, cost benefits, and war-fighting utility are best suited to the Space Force’s needs. Considering that space will become a critical domain of war the next time we have a major great-power conflict, we might not want to mess around here.
