In 2021, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base did not make a list of finalists to be home to Space Command headquarters, with its expected 1,400 new jobs, a disappointment to Dayton and Wright-Patt advocates at the time.
“This is an example of Ohio very aggressively pursuing advantages and new opportunities,” Michael Gessel, who represents the Dayton Development Coalition in the nation’s capital, said four years ago. “And when you are bold and aggressive, you don’t win everything.”
But Biden later reversed Trump’s decision, declaring that Space Command would remain in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The Alabama decision had been fraught with controversy almost from the start. Leaders in Colorado urged a reconsideration. (The command was located at Petersen Air Force Base near Colorado Springs.)
“It’s clear the (President Biden) administration will not go back to Alabama,” then-Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said in June 2023. “The prior administration put it there.”
This time, Wright-Patterson was not generally seen as a location possibility. But Brown at one point had renewed calls to locate the permanent headquarters of Space Command in Ohio, writing then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to urge him to consider the Buckeye State as the headquarters.
Wright-Patterson is a big base that touches all parts of the Air Force and the Space Force. The National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC) at Wright-Patterson reports to the deputy chief of space operations for intelligence in Washington, a change made last year. The Space Command move is not expected to have any impact on NSIC.
Redstone, near Huntsville, is a U.S. Army post that has served as a garrison for the Army Material Command, the Army Aviation and Missile Command, the Missile Defense Agency and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, among other missions. Private company Space X also has functions there.
“I am thrilled to report that the U.S. Space Command headquarters will move to the beautiful locale of a place called Huntsville, Ala. — forever to be known, from this point forward, as Rocket City," Trump said Tuesday.
Space Command was created by Trump during his first term in 2018.
Space Command and U.S. Space Force are not the same. The command is a military combatant command, conducting satellite, troop and other operations.
That is distinct from Space Force, which is a military branch like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Space Force is part of the Department of the U.S. Air Force.
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