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Air Force scrutinized for questionable decision to move Space Force HQ
According to a new congressional report, last year’s decision to move the Space Force’s Colorado headquarters to Alabama was likely made with bias and without credibility. The Air Force cannot pinpoint who exactly made the decision to do so.
On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office released a long-awaited 89-page report outlining their findings. The report suggested that moving the Peterson Space Force Base from Colorado Springs to Huntsville “lacked important information such as cost considerations for moving the entire command nearly 1,200 miles away.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Enjoyed a 45 minute one in one meeting with Gov. Ivey Tuesday morning. I gave her a "Space Force" cap. It looks like U.S. Space Force Headquarters is bound for Redstone Arsenal. <a href="https://t.co/kqR8fVBtt0">pic.twitter.com/kqR8fVBtt0</a></p>— Tom Butler (@senbutler) <a href="https://twitter.com/senbutler/status/1377963121294315520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The report also revealed concerns that investigators had regarding “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility,” and identified an “appearance of bias” surrounding the decision to move.
Colorado lawmakers were immediately concerned about about the legitimacy of the move once the decision was made and announced last year and requested that GAO investigators look into it. While the report does not rule or even touch on the legitimacy of the Air Force’s decision, it does validate the concerns that sparked the investigation.
The report states, “While the Air Force initially followed key aspects of its established basing process, Air Force officials acknowledged that they condensed some procedural steps of the established process. We also found that some steps were eliminated.”
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One of the GAO’s Defense Capabilities and Management team’s directors, Elizabeth Field, said that the report fails to address whether or not Redstone Arsenal is an appropriate location for Space Command to move to. Rather than blame the authors of the report, she points to an overwhelming lack of research, transparency, accountability, or any kind of decision making process by the Air Force used to make the decision.
She said, “One of the things that really sticks out to us is the fact that the Air Force didn’t fully consider the cost of the basing decision or relocating infrastructure and personnel at Peterson to somewhere else.”
These concerns were amplified in August of this year when former President Trump phoned into the Rick & Bubba Show, a nationally syndicated radio program.
While on air Trump said, “Space Force, I sent to Alabama. I hope you know that. [They] said they were looking for a home, and I single-handedly said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama.’ They wanted it. I said, ‘Let’s go to Alabama. I love Alabama.”
Both Democratic and Republican representatives have collectively released a statement suggesting that President Biden should carefully review the GOA’s report and urge him and military leadership to abandon the decision altogether
Their joint statement reads, “We have serious concerns about how this conclusion was reached, which contradicts the military leadership’s stated goal of reaching full operational capability as quickly as possible. Our national security should be the deciding factor in basing decisions. With the investigations now complete, the shortcomings of the Space Command basing process are fully available to the Biden administration.”
