Air Force Secretary Kendall Speaks At The National Press Club

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall today refuted a report that the Biden White House plans to base US Space Command headquarters in Colorado, overturning the previous administration’s controversial choice to move it to Alabama.

“I have no indication that the President’s going to do anything with regard to that decision,” Kendall responded to a grilling by Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., during a House defense appropriations subcommittee hearing. “Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin delegated it to me, and that’s where it stays today.”

The January 2021 decision by President Donald Trump, which disregarded the Air Force’s top choice of Colorado Springs, led to a bitter, and still raging, public debate between the Colorado and Alabama congressional delegations — as well as subsequent investigations by the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon Office of the Inspector General as to whether the process had been politically corrupted.

Both of the investigations found the choice to base SPACECOM HQ at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., reasonable, although both also pointed out deficiencies in the internal decision-making process. Since that time, the Department of the Air Force has been reconsidering which way to jump. Kendall told lawmakers that that reevaluation remains ongoing.

“I haven’t made a recommendation. I haven’t made a decision. We’re still in the process of doing some analysis,” he said, without providing any likely date for reaching a conclusion.

However, he stressed that the Department of the Air Force has undertaken a detailed re-look at the criteria for choosing a site, as well as the findings by the GAO and OIG.

Further, Kendall noted that he has consulted with SPACECOM head Gen. Jim Dickinson as to whether any requirements for the headquarters have “fundamentally changed” in the meantime. The process underlying Trump’s decision began in 2020, following a failed first effort launched in 2018 when the command was first established.

“We basically have taken into account the two independent reviews that were done, ensured that the requirements were valid, and reevaluated based on any changed circumstances that occurred,” Kendall said. “That’s the process that has been ongoing for roughly a year.”

Dickinson has argued that moving the headquarters from its temporary home at Peterson SFB in Colorado, where the former Air Force Space Command was located, would cause disruptions that would delay its “full operational capability” at a time when speed of action is needed due to increasing threats from China and Russia.

“The thing of what was raised in this case was the disruption of possibly having to move the headquarters, and delay in full operational capability. So, in the analysis we’ve been doing, we’ve taken all that into account,” Kendall explained.