Over 300 community leaders gathered in the Von Braun Center’s East Hall on Thursday, December 8th for the annual Redstone Arsenal update.

The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce hosts this event every year to help the community get “a glimpse behind the curtain” of the economic engine that powers roughly half of the Huntsville metro and employs 42,000 people.

“The realization of the economic impact that Redstone Arsenal has for our community is not just the jobs that are on post, it’s all that goes on in the region, and it’s really supported by Redstone and the level of expertise there,” said Greg Brown, chair of the Chamber Board of Directors in his opening statement. “Someone like me, that’s lived here for 60 years, doesn’t really understand exactly what goes on, and this community event really helps bring home a sense of pride — pride for national defense and security of our nation and the world.”

The event was the first for the new Senior Mission Commander of Redstone Arsenal Christopher Mohan since the U.S. Senate approved his promotion.

“We will continue to evolve, as a Federal Center of Excellence with our diverse and synergetic missions involving space, logistics, research and intelligence operations,” Mohan said in his keynote speech.

“To ensure Redstone stays on the path for success, I will focus on four lines of effort that are designed to ensure we are prepared to meet our global mission. Those lines of effort are recruiting and maintaining a 21st century workforce; continued synergetic growth on the installation; ensuring a high quality of life for the Redstone workforce and families; and providing security and response to ensure safety of those on the installation,” Mohan continued.

Leaders from eight different agencies, including the FBI and Marshall Space Flight Center, delivered reports Thursday with topics ranging from rockets and missiles to Redstone’s role in the country’s support to Ukraine.

A recurring theme during all the briefings was the plans for expansion. For NASA, the FBI, and the Army, growth is coming not only in the form of new buildings but also the addition of employees.

This was most prominently featured during FBI Deputy Assistant Director Drew Watts’ presentation. The FBI is seeing one of the biggest expansions with a new operations building opening earlier this year with much more to come after that.

For years, the visuals of the expanding FBI campus at Redstone Arsenal have been somewhat mysterious with visitors unable to take pictures of what they see during their visit.

During his presentation, Watts played a two-minute video that gave the audience a better glimpse of the sprawling north campus that has reached more $2 million in capital investments.

Included in the buildings that have opened so far include the first operations building, the largest on the campus with 1,300 employees, the first technology building, the TEDAC Explosive Technical Lab as well as the Health, Wellness & Resiliency Center. Greenways and sidewalks link the buildings to create the sense of campus connectivity.

“We see how much we’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time,” Watts said after screening the video, crediting the Redstone Arsenal and the Huntsville community for their support of the FBI’s growth into what has unofficially become a second FBI headquarters away from Quantico.

“This will be a robust campus, enabling the FBI to address the rapidly changing threat environment,” Watts said once the north campus is fully built out. “And it’s going to be a robust campus. But can I tell you the north campus is already booming. We are building a technology district which will really be the epicenter of the FBI’s technology infrastructure and tool development, centralizing our tech talent and tools to a connected campus environment.”

Watts also touched on some of the buildings scheduled for the future, including the FBI’s Innovation Center, which recently had its groundbreaking ceremony that the FBI’s Director Christopher Wray attended.

With all of these new buildings, the number of employees on campus will grow exponentially.

Watts explained that the campus will grow from its current 1,508 employees to roughly 2,000 by next summer. Long-term, the FBI will have full-time capacity for 5,000 employees by 2028 with the capability of accommodating 3,800 additional people for training.

Electronics engineers, IT specialists, cybersecurity analysts, data analysts and computer scientists were among the opportunities being promoted along with opportunities for clerical workers.

“We’ve got a lot of positions that are going to be opening, we got a lot of positions that are open now and those are the skill sets that we’re looking for,” Watts said.

Along with the FBI briefing, leaders from Marshall’s Space Flight Center and the Space and Missile Defense Agency also gave updates.

Jodie Singer from the Space Flight Center played a video documenting the successful Artemis launch and touched on the future Artemis II-V missions. With Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface and establish long-term exploration at the Moon in preparation for human missions to Mars.

SLS and NASA’s Orion spacecraft, along with the commercial human landing system and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, are NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration.

Space and Missile Defense gave an update on its efforts as well.

However, no update on the final destination regarding the home of Space Command was given.

“I can’t answer anything about Space Command coming to Huntsville,” said Richard De Fatta, Space and Missile Command Deputy to the Commander. “I don’t know anything more than you do. If you have that question, please pass that on to the Secretary of the Air Force.”

The last part of the event featured an extensive panel providing insight into the support the U.S. is providing Ukraine through both presidential drawdowns and foreign military sales of military equipment. The panel discussion focused on The Materiel Enterprise and Redstone’s Support to Ukraine.

The panelists included:

Renee Moser, Director of Operations and Readiness with Army Materiel Command
Dr. Myra Gray, US Army Security Assistance Command
Warren O’Donnell, PEO Missiles and Space
COL Richard Pfieffer, Chief of Staff Army Contracting Command

The focus was largely on the Army Materiel Command and its ability to provide anything and everything needed to help the efforts in Ukraine. Director Renee Mosher, said the AMC has handled $6.8 billion in weapons and supplies for Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February.

“We are managing, supporting and executing logistics and sustainment,” Mosher said. “If you talk about logistics, maintenance and sustainment, then AMC is the one organization that provides that for the U.S. Army. That gives you the magnitude and the scope of the support that we are managing to support Ukraine in this war effort, all at the same time balancing readiness of the United States Army and ensuring we maintain the equipment we need within the U.S. Army to support our readiness in our troops’ training and warfighting requirements,”

Retired Major General Jim Myles, who is now the Huntsville-Madison County Chamber of Commerce’s chair of its military affairs committee, added that Redstone Arsenal is the “center of gravity for supporting the Ukranians.”

“That’s what’s happening,” Myles said. “And it’s amazing when you think about what it is we normally do and then, all of a sudden, someone gets invaded halfway around the world. And Redstone Arsenal becomes decisively engaged in a big way. Why do we become engaged? Because of what we do in the arsenal.”