Few have had as comprehensive a perspective on U.S. Space Command’s journey to its permanent home in Colorado Springs as Andy Merritt.

The defense industry executive was a top aide to former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner when the new combatant command’s temporary headquarters opened at Peterson Space Force Base in 2019. In recent years, he’s been among a legion of bipartisan advocates for keeping the base in the Pikes Peak region as the Biden administration spent more than two years reviewing a last-minute decision by the Trump administration to uproot the command’s headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama.

On July 31, the Air Force and White House announced that President Joe Biden decided to let Space Command stay put, citing the ability to reach full operational capability within a month at its current location — a crucial factor amid increasing space-based national security concerns.

It was the right decision on multiple grounds and will yield big benefits for the local and state economy, Merritt said from Washington, D.C., in a telephone interview with Colorado Politics on Aug. 2.

As chief strategy officer with The O’Neil Group, a local private equity company, Merritt runs Catalyst Campus, a defense-focused business park just east of downtown Colorado Springs. He’s also working with the Colorado ONE Fund, a for-profit venture capital fund established this year in partnership with the state’s Colorado Venture Capital Authority. The fund expects to invest $34 million in emerging aerospace, defense, homeland security and related businesses.

A West Point graduate and Army veteran, Merritt was a top aide for former U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard and was chief defense officer for the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce and EDC’s predecessor organization before taking over as state director for Gardner in 2017. He’s been with The O’Neil Group since 2021.

Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Colorado Politics: Were you surprised at the decision when it was finally announced?

Andy Merritt: I’m not really surprised. I had no idea which way it was going to go. Because there were so much politics involved in the whole thing, it was hard to predict. The Alabama folks are quite upset by all this, but they thought they had it. I always thought, based on the merits of the case, it just made sense defense-wise, for it to stay in Colorado Springs.

CP: The Alabama delegation has been pointing to the initial assessments, where Alabama had advantages in some categories — but it seems during the more than two years of review, the national security situation changed, tilting things in Colorado’s favor. Is that what happened?

Merritt: It is. Understand a couple things: One, the process that they used that generated those results that you’re talking about, that was the first time they’ve ever done anything like that, where they included a whole lot of categories they’ve never included in the past — specifically, all those kinds of family support (categories).

Regardless of service, historically, the process has been very heavily weighted towards mission requirements with, just a little bit of inclusion of some of those other factors. This time, for the first time, they added new factors like housing and schools and things, which are very subjective, because it’s all based on what database you use. If you looked at different databases, like on education, Alabama looks better than Colorado Springs, (but) if you looked at other databases, Colorado Springs looks better than Huntsville. Those were always (reflective of) what database you’re using. They weren’t mission-related.

Always, even in that initial analysis, if you look at pure mission requirements — things like cost, how quick can you stand it up, what kind of workforce and capability existed in industry in town — Colorado Springs always outranked Huntsville on the mission-related requirements.

So I think what changed was, with what’s going on in the world, with Russia invading Ukraine, with China really surpassing the U.S. in some space-related technology capabilities — hypersonics, things like that — the world situation became more urgent, and there was a much greater realization that you can’t delay being able to compete in space. It’s not something that you can catch up on later. We had an advantage (and) we needed to keep it, or we were losing our advantage and needed to stop the bleed. So I think mission took on a much greater emphasis in the past year to two years with all that’s going on — China saber-rattling in Taiwan, things like that. People realized mission just had to come first.

CP: It looks like Alabama is raising a fuss over this decision. Do you get the sense folks can put this behind them, or will this be an issue moving forward?

Merritt: There may be some attempts to drag it out some. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that. But it becomes more complicated now that the decision has been made.

I have no inside info, but (according to media) reports, (Space Command Gen. James) Dickinson was recommending to the president that, based on mission, Colorado Springs was the right answer. That’s going to cause a whole lot of members (of Congress) that aren’t in Colorado or Alabama to go, “OK, the decision’s been made, it sounds like it’s been made based on the needs of our national security. I’m not going to be engaging in supporting any efforts any further,” where before you could find people willing to weigh in because the decision hadn’t been made. That all goes away now with a decision having been made.

CP: For instance, there’s been all this maneuvering in Congress, including members of the Alabama delegation holding up funding in the House Armed Services Committee.

Merritt: What you saw reflected in those actions was frustration that a decision wasn’t being made. You were seeing people going: “Look, if this is a national security imperative, that we get this decided and located, then why are we dragging this out?” And that’s a legitimate question to have been asking. I think, frankly, some of the members of our delegation didn’t disagree with the notion that this thing needs to be decided so we can move forward on national security. That’s why I say, now that a decision has been made, all that goes away for those folks that aren’t in one of those two states.

CP: Now that it’s no longer the temporary headquarters, what will be happening on the ground in Colorado Springs?

Merritt: They have a request in to get a permanent headquarters built out. Obviously they’ve been building pieces of it over the past few years, but now there’s some urgency to getting the rest of that. Space Command had requests in for funding, and I think now, you will see those move forward — there will be an effort to remove those restrictions in congressional bills and allow them to actually build out those remaining pieces — I think it’s $150 million that’s been reported — so that they can achieve their full operational capability. That will be the focus going forward, is get that done and get them fully operational so they can do all aspects of their mission, some of which may have been hampered a little bit by not being able to get the right people hired because they couldn’t get the right buildings built.

CP: Are the local resources there? If the money is available, are the contractors on hand, can the work be done that quickly?

Merritt: Yes, absolutely. It can move pretty quickly because there’s a lot less that would need to be built here. Now, if you’re talking going to Alabama, it was $1 to $2 billion worth of infrastructure that had to be put in. That’s just not the case here. You’re talking about finishing off the existing infrastructure, not starting from scratch. The capability is there is to build out what they need.

CP: What’s the role of Catalyst Campus, going forward?

Merritt: If you think of it this way, a combatant command is the command that sets the requirements. They are the ones that say, “These are the capabilities we need.” The purpose of Catalyst Campus and things like it is to translate those requirements to industry, so that industry can then start producing those capabilities.

Oftentimes, a lot of the innovation that (the Department of Defense) needs comes from small businesses. That’s where your innovators and disruptors are is in small businesses. Catalyst Campus includes large primes — the Lockheed Martin, Deloitte, AWS, those kind of folks are on campus — but (also) includes those small businesses. Its focus is, how do we help those small businesses produce those new disruptive, innovative technologies? Having access to the command allows easier translation of “This is what they need, these are the things, the problems that they need capability to fill,” and in getting industry to start producing that.

CP: Colorado is known as an aerospace industry hub — in El Paso County, certainly, and along the Interstate 36 corridor northwest of Denver and across the state. Do you foresee that Space Command will be, to use a word, a catalyst, that’ll propel the industry statewide?

Merritt: Absolutely. Industry can produce amazing things, but if they don’t know what to make, they can’t solve your problems. Those interactions that happen with that command that knows, “These are the capabilities we need, here’s where our competitors are catching up with us or producing the new innovations — we need this capability” frees up industry. They get to do what they do best, which is get creative and produce stuff.

CP: You’ve been in the thick of this from the beginning — you were with Sen. Gardner in 2019 when Space Command’s temporary headquarters were stood up. Looking across the last four, five years, what does it feel like to finally be here with a green light?

Merritt: It feels great because it’s the right thing for the command — personnel-wise and capability-wise, it’s the right decision. So it feels great to have the right decision finally be made. That’s going to allow the command to move forward and, therefore, keep our country safer. It will also have great benefit to the economy of Colorado.

Another thing I’ll add is, the other people that benefit from this are the men and women that work there at the command, who have been facing the uncertainty of, “Do I buy a home in Colorado? Do I set up roots here? Am I going to move?” This constant “Is an announcement coming?” has kept their lives uncertain. And so that certainty for those folks is huge.