Huntsville, Colorado Springs or Los Angeles? Best US Base for UK Aerospace and Space

One rule shapes this decision more than any city on the list.

ITAR restricts who may see controlled technical data, and it does not care where that person is standing. A British engineer sitting in your American office is still a foreign person under the regulation. Handing them controlled data without a licence is treated as an export.

That single fact reorganises how a UK aerospace business should structure its US operation. The city matters after you have solved it, not before.

Four questions to answer before you pick a city

Is your technology ITAR-controlled? Plenty of space hardware and software is not. If yours is, the structure of your US business and the nationality of your staff become design constraints rather than details.

Who is your customer? Government space buying concentrates around commands and arsenals. Commercial launch and satellite work concentrates around Los Angeles.

Do you need cleared people? Clearances take months and cannot be recruited around. Where cleared people already live is a hard constraint.

What will the employment rules do to your contracts? These three states differ more sharply than in any other sector we have written about. California voids non-competes outright.

The export control rule that catches British companies

A deemed export happens when controlled technical data is released to a foreign person inside the United States.

Under the regulations, a foreign person is anyone other than a US citizen, a permanent resident, or certain protected individuals such as refugees and asylees. A company not incorporated in the United States also counts.

The practical effect is that a licence or licence exception is generally required before you share controlled technical data with a foreign national in the US. University export control guidance sets out the narrow exemptions, which cover published information, fundamental research and catalogue course instruction.

For a UK aerospace company this has three consequences. Your London engineering team may not be able to see what your US team is building. Your US hires may need to be US persons for certain roles. And your corporate structure may need to keep controlled work inside a US entity with access controls around it.

None of that is a reason to avoid the US. It is a reason to take advice before you hire, because the wrong first hire creates a compliance problem rather than a capability.

This sits alongside the ownership question covered in our guide to choosing a US base for UK cybersecurity companies. There, Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence rules create a parallel problem for classified work.

Huntsville: where the headquarters went

US Space Command relocated its headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville after President Trump announced the decision in September 2025.

The command employs roughly 1,500 military and civilian staff. Retired General John Hyten estimated that fewer than 50 current staff would relocate, with the remainder filled by new Huntsville hires. That is a hiring opportunity as much as a relocation.

Huntsville was already substantial before the move. Redstone Arsenal employs around 45,500 people and is heading toward 50,000, according to the City of Huntsville. Its annual economic impact on Alabama is $36.2 billion, and it accounts for 58% of the Tennessee Valley’s gross regional product.

The arsenal hosts Army Materiel Command, NASA, Space and Missile Defense Command and a growing FBI presence. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center sits in the same ecosystem.

Who Huntsville suits

Huntsville suits companies selling into defence and government space programmes, particularly missile defence, propulsion and systems engineering.

It suits them less if the product is commercial satellite services or launch. The buying in Huntsville is programmatic and slow, and it rewards firms willing to build relationships over years rather than quarters.

Employment rules in Alabama

Alabama has no state minimum wage law, so the federal rate of $7.25 applies, per the US Department of Labor. That rarely binds on engineering salaries but affects support roles.

There is no state pay transparency law, so job adverts carry no salary disclosure duty. Alabama enforces reasonable restrictive covenants under its own statute, which puts it at the permissive end of the three states here.

Employment is at-will, as our at-will employment guide explains for international employers.

Colorado Springs: the headquarters left, the capability did not

The most common mistake UK companies will make this year is reading the Space Command headlines and crossing Colorado Springs off the list.

Half of all Space Force personnel remain stationed in Colorado. Five military installations in the region control global GPS systems and manage most military satellite communications. NORAD and US Northern Command remain there, as do the operational units that support Space Command.

General Hyten described the region’s data infrastructure as almost impossible to move. He also noted that Space Force budgets have grown from $16 billion in 2021 to $75 billion.

The commercial base is real too. The Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC reports more than 160 aerospace companies and a $3 billion contribution to the local economy in 2024. The labour pool runs above 150,000, with 8.3% job growth projected over five years.

Around 400 military separations happen each month in the region. For a company that needs people with operational space experience, that is a recruitment pipeline rather than a statistic.

Employment rules in Colorado

Colorado creates the most administrative work of the three states.

Every job posting must include the pay rate or range, describe benefits including healthcare, retirement and paid time off, and give application instructions with a good-faith deadline. State guidance confirms this captures remote roles performable from Colorado. Penalties run from $500 to $10,000 per violation.

Non-competes bind only workers earning above $130,014 from 1 January 2026, per Epstein Becker Green. Colorado’s minimum wage is $15.16 per hour.

Our guide to US pay transparency laws covers how Colorado compares with the states that followed it.

Los Angeles: commercial space, and no non-competes at all

Los Angeles is where commercial space money is going.

Venture funding for LA-area defence technology passed $4 billion in 2025, more than double the 2024 figure, according to Commercial Observer. Aerospace and defence added 11,000 jobs to LA County between 2022 and 2024.

El Segundo is the centre of it. Industrial vacancy there fell below 2% at the end of 2025, and the city has the second-highest concentration of PhDs in California. Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and the Aerospace Corporation sit alongside SpaceX in Hawthorne and newer firms including Anduril.

For a UK company building satellites, components or space software for commercial buyers, this is the densest market in the country.

The California problem, and it is a real one

California voids non-competes entirely, and the position hardened in 2024.

SB 699 and AB 1076 both took effect on 1 January 2024. Non-competes are void and unenforceable regardless of where or when the contract was signed, which explicitly reaches agreements signed outside California.

Quinn Emanuel’s analysis sets out the rest. Employees, former employees and prospective employees have a private right of action for injunctive relief and damages, with fee-shifting in their favour. AB 1076 also required employers to notify affected current and former employees that their non-competes were void.

For a UK aerospace company, the practical consequence is that a California hire cannot be restrained from joining a competitor down the road. Protection has to come from confidentiality terms, IP assignment and trade secret law instead, as covered in our guide to hiring US talent while safeguarding IP assets.

California’s minimum wage is $16.90 per hour, the highest of the three states here.

Huntsville, Colorado Springs and Los Angeles at a glance

Solve the export control question before the property question

The sequence that works for UK aerospace companies is unusual, because compliance comes first.

Establish whether your technology is controlled, and under which regime. Then decide what your US entity needs to look like, including whether controlled work must be walled off from your UK team. Only then choose a city and start hiring.

Reversing that order is expensive. A US engineer hired into a role they cannot legally perform is a wasted year.

What you can do early is place commercial and business development people, because those roles rarely touch controlled technical data. An Employer of Record lets you do that in any state without incorporating, which buys time while the structural work happens. Our guide to how an Employer of Record works explains the mechanics.

Note that an EOR does not resolve export control obligations, any more than it resolves clearance requirements. It handles employment, not compliance with ITAR.

When the US team grows, the EOR versus own entity decision is worth revisiting, and for controlled work you will almost certainly need your own entity.

For the wider picture on regional differences, see our comparison of East Coast, West Coast and Middle America strategies. Our guide to expanding to the USA from the UK sets out the steps in order.

Talk to us before you commit to a city

We help UK and European aerospace and space companies hire in the US without setting up an entity first. We also advise on which state suits the roles being recruited.

Get in touch with our team to talk through your options.