The Department of Defense's inspector general announced over the weekend that it will probe the Trump administration’s decision to house U.S. Space Command headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama, Axios reported.
The investigation will look into whether the decision, announced a week before former President Donald Trump left office, complied with Air Force and Pentagon policy.
It had been widely expected that the Air Force would choose to keep Space Command headquarters at its current provisional location of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Colorado GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn, who called for the probe, said in a statement that "It is imperative that we thoroughly review what I believe will prove to be a fundamentally flawed process that focused on bean-counting rather than American space dominance," according to CNN.
Colorado voted against Trump in the last election, while Alabama voted for him.
In a separate letter to the acting inspector general, Lamborn stressed that "I continue to be concerned that the strategic basing process appears to have been subject to undue political influence."
Space Command, whose headquarters is expected to bring with it some 1,500 jobs, was established in 2019 as a unified combatant command and is meant to help protect space assets that the military depends on for various types of warfighting, according to Axios.
The Air Force said in announcing the decision that Huntsville was picked over five other locations, because it "compared favorably" on numerous factors — including mission, infrastructure capacity, community support, and costs to the Pentagon, CNN reported.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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