Officials in Colorado Springs arrived in Washington this week to push for a bigger share of the defense industry pie to offset the loss of U.S. Space Command, which President Trump is relocating to near Huntsville, Alabama.
Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade told The Washington Times that his city expects to remain a player in the space defense sector.
“We’re also lobbying for future opportunities such as Golden Dome and other kinds of assets that fit perfectly into our ecosystem,” Mr. Mobolade, an independent, said. “Our city exists to help serve the interests of our nation’s defense … and we will be lobbying for other assets that benefit both Colorado and the nation.”
The Golden Dome is a missile defense shield the Trump administration says would repel attacks aimed at the U.S. It would be based on, but much larger than, Israel’s Iron Dome.
The Golden Dome project will be led by Space Command, meaning that many of the hundreds of billions of dollars allocated for the project will be directed to Huntsville.
However, Andy Merritt, who runs a defense-focused business park dubbed the Catalyst Campus, said Golden Dome should create sizable opportunities and cash flow for Colorado Springs.
U.S. Northern Command, responsible for homeland defense and designated as the future operator of Golden Dome, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command are in Colorado Springs. Defense contractors expected to be involved in the project have locations near the city, and the U.S. Air Force Academy is also in El Paso County, Colorado.
However, an obstacle to determining if Golden Dome will be a financial windfall for Colorado Springs is the lack of clarity. There is uncertainty about which components of the 1,400-member Space Command, if any, stay in the city.
“Not everything is moving, so when we say lobbying, we’re lobbying for clarity,” Mr. Mobolade said.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Times.
City officials are not just relying on Golden Dome to counterbalance the loss of Space Command.
Mr. Mobolade said he’s had meetings with other defense contractors and others in the industry who see Colorado Springs as a place for growth.
The fight over Space Command’s permanent location has raged since 2019 after Mr. Trump resurrected the combat command at Colorado Springs’ Peterson Space Force Base as a standalone entity after being inactive for 17 years. In the final days of his first term, he decided to relocate Space Command’s home to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, pending an environmental review.
That review was finished during President Joseph R. Biden’s first year in office, but he decided not to act on the funding. In 2024, he said Space Command would remain in Colorado Springs, citing a potential disruption in readiness by moving staff across the country.
Upon returning to office in January, Mr. Trump revived his plan to relocate the command to Alabama.
This time, he said Colorado’s mail-in voting laws, which he has railed against, played a role in his decision.
“The problem I have with Colorado — one of the big problems — they do mail-in voting. They went to all mail-in voting. So they have automatically crooked elections, and we can’t have that,” Mr. Trump said during a press conference announcing the move.
Mr. Mobolade expressed disbelief that Mr. Trump is punishing his town over a statewide initiative he can’t control.
“Hearing that for me was not a good enough reason to move it, but I got to believe there’s more,” he said. “But that’s what the president said.”
