The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report Thursday, revealing some of the shortfalls in the process of reversing the decision to locate the new U.S. Space Command Headquarters (HQ) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.
In 2023, then President Joe Biden announced that the Space Command HQ would remain in Colorado despite the Air Force Secretary identifying Redstone Arsenal as the best site just two years earlier.
The report, done at the request of U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, detailed the GAO’s findings from investigating the Air Force’s selection process, claiming it found failures to follow so-called “Analysis of Alternatives” (AOA) best practices.
“GAO believes that the AOA best practices are relevant and, if effectively implemented, can help ensure such basing decisions are transparent and deliberate,” the report reads. “Developing basing guidance consistent with these best practices, and determining the basing actions to which it should apply, would better position the Air Force to substantiate future basing decisions and help prevent bias, or the appearance of bias, from undermining their credibility.”
This report addresses steps the Air Force and other decision-makers took between May 2022 and July 2023 to identify the permanent headquarters location, the extent to which the Air Force basing reevaluation process incorporated relevant AOA best practices, and the status of U.S. Space Command headquarters as of fall 2024.
“The Air Force’s reevaluation process incorporated some elements of selected AOA best practices to revalidate its preferred location for U.S. Space Command headquarters. For example, the Air Force identified risks and mitigation strategies, and varied some costs associated with candidate locations as part of a sensitivity analysis. However, we found that shortfalls persisted in these areas and others, including the weighting of selection criteria,” the report concluded.
While it is widely expected that the newly confirmed Secretary of the Air Force, Troy Meink, will officially move the Space Command HQ back to Huntsville, nothing has been officially announced.
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
