As they prepare to start work at their consulting Department of Government Efficiency organization, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy should look upwards. At least figuratively.
More specifically, they should contemplate the poorly conceived idea of relocating the U.S. military’s Space Command from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Huntsville, Alabama. Reports suggest that President-elect Donald Trump will issue such a directive shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, 2025. That’s certainly what members of Congress from Alabama are hoping.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) said recently, “I think you’ll see in the first week that [Trump is] in office, he’ll sign an executive order reversing Biden’s directive [to locate Space Command in Colorado].” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) shared a similar sentiment, observing, “I would hope to say, close to 100%, that close to the first or second day, we’ll find out that Space Command will be moving to the proper place in this country.”
It is not, in fact, the proper place for Space Command.
The practical truth is that Space Command is now fully operational in Colorado Springs. The Command’s leadership has testified that its efficiency is best served by remaining where it is (for full disclosure, it should be noted that the Washington Examiner is owned by the Anschutz Corporation, which is based and has business interests in Colorado). Moving Space Command to Alabama will cost a lot of money, cause very significant workforce disruptions, and inject friction into the efficiency of a critical element of the U.S. national defense architecture.
That brings us back to the DOGE.
According to Musk and Ramaswamy, the DOGE’s primary focus will be attacking the regulatory state. This is a welcome ambition. But the DOGE’s mission statement, interest in efficiency, means it must look beyond regulations. Space Command looms large in this regard. Indeed, there could be few better examples of government inefficiency than a plan to take on additional costs in order to break what is already working well. And that’s exactly what moving Space Command would entail.
Yes, the Air Force previously assessed that Space Command’s operating costs would be lower in Alabama than in Colorado. The problem is that this assessment preceded Space Command’s current infrastructure, workforce, and orientation. To move the organization now would entail significant new costs, certainly in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. At a minimum, it would mean new, highly secure, and redundant command and control, communications, and security infrastructure. But it would also mean hiring new workers at the same time as having to provide the nation with continuity of mission assurance. Providing this assurance would be very difficult. Perhaps even impossible.
Moreover, it’s not as if we’re talking about relocating an Air National Guard unit. We’re talking about the unified combatant command responsible for supervising all U.S. military operations in space. This is no small concern.
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Consider, after all, that the Russians are building space-based nuclear strike platforms designed to kill entire U.S. satellite constellations, that China plans to deploy a 13,000-strong satellite network able to “even suppress Starlink,” and that both China and Russia have developed individual satellite-killing satellites. On what planet could it be considered government efficiency to jeopardize the provision of a critical national defense capability in this context?
Trump will have to make his own judgment on how America’s defensive needs are served with Space Command. But if they are serious about their new role, Musk and Ramaswamy would do well to give Trump some quick advice: Keep Space Command where it is and where it’s working.