(Tribune News Service) — A top general with U.S. Space Command visited Redstone Arsenal this week, according to an Army news release, at a time of heightened speculation over the command’s future home.

The visit by Lt. Gen. Thomas L. James, Space Command deputy commander, was intended to be a fact-finding trip on the Army’s space capabilities. Army Space and Missile Defense Command is headquartered at Redstone.

“It is absolutely worth the time to come here because a lot of the capabilities I have known about at SMDC have matured to a level I was not tracking,” James said in the news release. “There is really no other way to learn about Army space other than doing it.”

Alabama politicians have spoken with increasing certainty both before and since President Donald Trump’s re-election that Space Command’s headquarters would be relocated to Redstone Arsenal.

The U.S. Air Force named the arsenal the “preferred location” in 2021 for a permanent headquarters for the newly formed Space Command. The command had been temporarily housed at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. — which is still its location after President Joe Biden’s 2023 decision for it to remain there rather than move it to Alabama.

Space Command is charged with defending space and delivering space capabilities to joint and combined U.S. and allied forces. Locating the command in Huntsville would bring at least 1,600 new jobs, AL.com has reported.

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