U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a Santa Barbara congressman want to know why California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base was excluded from the list of finalists for the location of the U.S. Space Command headquarters.
Feinstein and Democratic U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal asked for information about the evaluation in a letter sent Tuesday to the secretary of the Air Force.
The letter said Vandenberg’s existing space-related missions and assets, and its proximity to the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, offer “unique and unparalleled advantages.”
The letter states that in 2019 Vandenberg and sites in Alabama and Colorado were selected as three finalist locations. But protests that the process was unfair led to a new evaluation that resulted in six finalists, eliminating Vandenberg and adding bases in Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Nebraska, the letter said.
