 The POW-MIA committee is committed to achieving the fullest possible accounting of the United States personnel still held captive, missing, or unaccounted for from all our nation's wars, which includes bringing the remains of the fallen comrades home and repatriated among living United States POWs. Our mission is carried forward by the following, demanding the immediate release of any American POW and obtaining the most up-to-date information and fullest accountability of those that remain MIA, preserving the legacy and memory of former, current, and future POWs and those missing in action to ensure that their inhumane experiences are calculated as part of the cost of war and nation's part of the national consciousness, catering awareness to the POW-MIA experience to include its lasting efforts on families of those held captive or who remain unaccounted for, engaging in local activities such as meetings, dedications, and ceremonies relative to the POW-MIA concerns, bringing awareness, greater understanding, and knowledge to all, increasing awareness and responsibility surrounding POW-MIA accountability and recovery, supporting efforts to provide adequate resources for POW-MIA initiatives, encouraging DAV departments and chapters to support POW-MIA initiatives. Thank you, Gene. At this time, I'd like to introduce you to the committee. We have from the Department of Pennsylvania Wayne Stratus, who led the prayer. From the Department of Oregon, Dick Lovegren, and from the Department of New Mexico, Gene Weber. I'm the committee chairman of this interim committee, Vincent Darkangelo from Department of Pennsylvania. I'd also like to recognize two people from our executive office, our executive director of the legislation here at the Washington D.C. office, Gary Augustine, and the assistant director of legislative office, Lee Roy Acosta. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. And now it is my privilege to read the biography of this very impressive interim director of the DPAA Defense Department Accounting Agency, Ms. Fern Sumter Wimbush. Ms. Fern Sumter Wimbush was selected in October of 2015 to serve as the principal director of the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. In support of the director, DPAA, she is responsible for leading the Washington D.C. office in formulating policy, overseeing business, development, and increasing outreach initiatives to achieve the agency's goal of providing families and with the fullest possible accounting of missing personnel from past conflicts. Ms. Wimbush hails from Boston, Massachusetts, where she was a 1989 honor graduate of the University of Massachusetts and distinguished military graduate of the Suffolk University Reserve Officer Training Course, ROTC program in Boston. She began her career as a private first class in the Army Reserves in 1983. Her services continued upon her transfer to the Massachusetts National Guard until her active duty appointment as a military intelligence second lieutenant in 1990. Over the next 25 years, she held different positions of increased responsibility in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Korea, and the Netherlands, culminating with a deployment operation enduring freedom in Kabul, Afghanistan, and subsequently as the commander of the joint base Meyer Henderson in Virginia. Ms. Wimbush relied from the Army, retired from the Army after 31 years of military service in January of 2015. Her education includes a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in business management, information systems from the University of Massachusetts, a Master of Science degree in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and General Staff College military intelligence officer, base, and advanced courses in Airborne School. Her awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, First Oak Leaf Cluster, Distinguished Meritorious Service Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal, Joint Services Achievement Medal, First Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Army Achievement Medal. Please welcome Ms. DPAA Principal Director, Mrs. Fern Wimbush, Sumpter Wimbush. Good afternoon, everyone. Vince, thank you very much for inviting me to participate in this POW-MIA seminar. It is an honor and a privilege to be here to talk to you about what the Department of Defense is doing for our missing and unaccounted for. But before I get started, I'd like to first ask if you all will join me in a very short moment of silence for those who are still missing and unaccounted for, those who are still serving, and those who continue to be deployed around the world. Thank you. The Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, our mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for those who are missing from past wars. Currently, there are just over 82,000 still missing and unaccounted for. Of those 82,000, we estimate that about 26,000 is what we can actually account for. And that's largely because the majority of those who are still missing are either results of a deep sea loss and will never be recovered, or they were involved in a very catastrophic aircraft crash as an example, or they are still lying in North Korea, which, as all of us know in this room, we don't have access to today. Now, a little bit about who we are and how we began. In 2014, Secretary Chuck Hagel, then the Secretary of Defense directed that all accounting efforts be combined into a single agency head by a senior civilian. Then in January 2015, we stood up and he activated the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. We reached full operational capability in January of 2016, and we have been working very hard to implement our Chartered Authorities as directed by the Secretary of Defense, which include identifying our missing requirements, of course, and also to pursue resourcing through the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. I'd also like to note that if you are interested in reviewing the DPAA Charter, it is on our webpage at www.dpaa.mil. And then lastly and most importantly, the Secretary has chartered us to communicate better and more effectively and more often with the families of our nation's missing and unaccounted for. Now, as was mentioned earlier, I came on board to DPAA in October of 2015, largely to do the business side of the new agency. And then, as many of you might have heard, I took over as the acting director in June of 2016. There have been a number of people, both internal and external to DPAA, who are very concerned about the fact that we lost our previous director. But I will tell you that in the absence of the director, DPAA has achieved some of the most incredible milestones over the last 18 months. And I'm not going to talk about those right now, I'm going to talk about them a little bit later in the briefing. And so it is because of the dedicated men and women of DPAA that we've been able to move this mission forward and account for more servicemen than ever before. In some cases, triple the number in others two times the number. But let me assure you that no one is more excited about an onboarding of a new director than I am. This has been an incredible journey. It's an awesome organization with awesome personnel, both military and civilian. But it is a heavy lift when you're trying to be both the deputy working business operations and leading such a large organization. But let me tell you a little bit about who belongs to this agency and why over the past almost two years now I decided to stay. The workforce in DPAA consists of over 600 personnel of varying specialties, both military and civilian. And we're a pretty balanced force, half and half. So half civilian, half military. And as you can see on the right hand side of the slide, I have quite an experienced knowledgeable and technical workforce. Starting from archaeologists, archivists, all the way down to a medical examiner. DPAA has its own medical examiner largely because the medical examiners in the military forces and NDOD today are primarily focused on current day accounting. So if a current day loss occurs and God forbid a serviceman or woman are brought back, those medical examiners are handling those identifications. And so the secretary saw a need for the DPAA to have its own medical examiner. And so we do. Now I could stand up here and talk for the next two hours about all of the wonderful things we do with regard to our operations. But I think what would tell the story much better is a video that I hope you all will enjoy. So I'm going to go ahead and roll that video and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about where we are today. We write no last chapters. We close no books. We put away no final memories. End to America's involvement in Vietnam cannot come before we have achieved the fullest possible accounting of those missing in action. Why keep searching? The answer's simple. You never leave a fallen American behind. The mission of the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and their nation. Strategically located in Arlington, Virginia, with major facilities at Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hickam, Hawaii, and Offit Air Force Base, Nebraska, the more than 600 person newly established defense agency, is jointly manned by soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and Department of Defense civilians with specialized skills. Researching, recovering, identifying, and ultimately returning an individual to their family begins with analysis and investigation. The DPAA experts begin the search by studying all known information regarding the circumstances of each loss. Historians and analysts gather information from U.S. veterans, foreign witnesses, archival records, and other sources. They then create a case file for each unaccounted for American. This file may include historical records, official correspondence, maps, photographs, daily activity logs, and medical and personnel records of the missing person. These files are continually updated until an identification is made. Well, the research is done here. Once we have enough research, we get approval from our leadership either to do a small two-person team investigation, which we call our research investigation team, where they just basically don't need their canvas villages or conduct interviews in smaller towns or cities to just gather enough information that would warrant us to do field operations. Once all available information is analyzed, a decision can be made to dissenter individuals buried as unknown or conduct field investigations. During a typical investigation mission, personnel interview potential witnesses, conduct on-site reconnaissance, and survey terrain for safety and logistical concerns. Teams also try to generate new leads that may result in future recoveries. The main goal of the investigation is to obtain enough information to correlate or connect a particular site with one or more missing Americans. If enough on-site evidence is found, the site will be recommended for recovery and excavation. Recovery sites range in size from a few square meters, such as in individual burials, to areas larger than football fields for aircraft crashes. DPAA may hire as many as 100 local workers to help with the excavation process. As we're doing excavation, we want to be able to control all the aspects of that excavation. One of the things with archaeology and excavation is you only get one chance. It's a destructive process, and so we need to make sure that we do it the right way, especially for cases like this where it's forensic archaeology and these remains need to be properly handled for families. For me, this job as my primary occupation is very important because I'm able to bring home these service members to families that have been waiting for 70 years, and that's really an amazing feeling to be able to give something to a family. They never thought that they would even be able to have. Investigative and recovery missions in search of missing Americans take DPAA personnel to distant remote and often dangerous locations all over the globe. Rice paddies in Southeast Asia, urbanized areas on the Korean Peninsula, 16,000 foot mountain tops in the Himalayas, and underwater sites off the coast of Papua New Guinea. And we still continue to search the battlefields of World War II throughout Europe. And unfortunately, that's not possible. I just can't do that. But if the opportunity arose where I was able to volunteer to come back out here and welcome stories of where these guys might be, but scour the earth for the remains. After a successful recovery, all evidence is then transported to the DPAA laboratories. Once they've arrived in the lab, the painstaking process of identification begins. This is the final step of the mission, leading to the return of an individual. In many of the cases, an important step in the identification process is DNA analysis, which is accomplished by cutting a bone sample that is sent to the armed forces DNA identification laboratory for sequencing. One of the challenges DPAA faces today is the lack of reference samples from family members of those still unaccounted for. Any person who is a relative of an unaccounted for American is encouraged to contact their service casualty office to ensure there is a DNA reference sample on file for that service member. DPAA makes an identification when all available evidence remains. Artifacts and historical documents point to the same person. The ID process can take anywhere from a few months to several years to complete. Any unresolved cases are kept open with the hope that new evidence will be found or new technologies will be developed to make a future identification possible. Once an American has been identified, there remains a return to their family through their respective service casualty office. They return home with full military honors and given the respect they earn through their service and sacrifice for their country. Oh, as a family member, this agency to me is doing phenomenal work and in a very personal way because when somebody loses somebody like my father and you really don't know what the story is for 70 years and then you find an agency that knows about him and keeps his memory alive, keeps the mission alive to try to find him. It's very meaningful in a very personal way because it means you're not just doing this yourself alone. You have a whole body of people who are concerned about finding your dad and bringing him home. The men and women of the Defense POW, MIA Accounting Agency are united in their effort to recover and return as many of our missing personnel as possible. One more patriot return, one more family that now has answers, one more step in fulfilling our nation's promise. Thank you very much. So that video, as I'm sure you heard, was narrated by Mr. Kevin Costner, so we thank him for his dedication and donated time, most importantly. In the video, it mentioned at least one of our government partners that we work very closely with, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, which the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory falls under, and the reason I'm mentioning them is because even though I have a medical examiner assigned to the DPAA, he also, and she, we actually have two, one is dedicated and one is on loan, but they coordinate directly with AFMEs and AFDIL when it comes to DNA and family reference samples matching. So there are checks and balances to the science, which is most important. As I talk to families, that has been a question of the past. Not only do we do peer review, but we are also very closely tied to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in developing new processes and procedures for making identifications. So we are moving forward. In addition to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, we also partner very closely with the State Department, as many of you probably already know, the National Security Council, and then of course the Under Secretary for Policy, who happens to be my boss. So even though the Secretary of Defense has all of the responsibilities and authorities of this mission, I report directly to the Under Secretary for Policy, and then of course my second line is the Secretary. So I want to talk a little bit about where we've been and our successes and where we're going. So as I mentioned in 2016, we achieved some pretty incredible milestones. Most specifically, we identified 164 personnel. That is more than, in some case, some years triple, but mostly double what had been done before with this effort. Now, a large portion of our identifications from last year, 2016, came from disintermits, as you can see on the blue side of that ring, and then also going up towards the left. World War II and the Korean War made up the majority of our identifications from last year. While only 7% came from Vietnam, one of our most challenging locations. Now, the reason that making identifications out of our Vietnam War recoveries is because the remains that we get out of Vietnam, Laos in Cambodia, because of the acidic soil and industrialization, we don't get very many, very many remains. And the remains that we do receive are often damaged to the point where we have to use what's called next generation sequencing to actually extract the DNA and make an identification. Southeast Asia is also the most expensive area that we operate in. And as you saw in the video, some of our teams are operating on sides of mountains. The only way to get there is via helicopter. And so we have to contract through the host nation our contract services. And not only do I have to contract the lift, but I also have to contract the Medevac. So we have a Medevac helicopter on site should anybody on our team gets injured. And so that's another reason why last year I signed a policy where we will not allow family members to travel to our sites. Largely because the sites that we're going to today are much more challenging than the sites of the past. In fact, this past year we had to shut down a site because we came upon some unexploded ordinance. And we're starting to experience that more and more as we go deeper into Southeast Asia. This slide, it is not intended for us to go into a lot of detail. What I wanted to show you was the impact of the FY17 budget crisis. Our budget for FY17 was reduced by about $27 million. When we conducted our missions in 2015 and in 2016, we had about 130 million to conduct our operations. This year for 2017, we had 112 million. It took a huge hit and caused all of those red lines you see on this slide. So we had to reduce our missions by about 35%. Very challenging for us. Now in 2016, I was able at, when I was doing the business part of DPAA, even though our budget in 2016 was also reduced from 2015, I was able to go back and request more money and get it in a timely fashion. But in FY17, because the budget process was so delayed and we didn't actually get a budget until late in the year. And for those of you who have worked for the government before, you know, you never request money that you can't spend. I was very concerned that if I requested more money, it would come too late in the year for me to execute it. So we had to live within our $112 million budget this year. But that's okay because for 2018 and 19, we've been able to fight for the money that we need. And so over the next five years, thanks to many veterans organizations who lobby on the hill for us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Over the next five years, our budget will fluctuate anywhere from 130 to 140. Now, 140 is really due to inflation and due to salaries increase over time. So we're good for the next five years. And I believe that we'll be able to execute this level of operations over the next coming years. Of course, subject to the new director's decision. And so I don't know if I mentioned when I talked about the new director that we hope one should be announced here over the next month or two. I'm hopeful that we'll get one before the end of the summer. And that decision is being made by the Secretary of Defense. So in addition to the impacts on our mission specifically, that obviously impacted our identifications for this year. But on top of the budget challenge we had, in the early portion of this year, we lost our medical examiner because he retired. And so that flat line that you see in 2017 in the January, February mark time frame was due to the fact that we lost our medical examiner. But we have a new medical examiner on board. And as you can see going up into April, May and June, he has come on board. His name is Lieutenant Colonel Barron. He's taken over as the medical examiner and has picked up those cases and are moving them along. So I'm hopeful that we will at least make 164, but that's not our goal of course. When the agency was stood up, Congress demanded that we shoot for 200. Now I don't always like to talk a lot about that 200 number because it is a mark on the wall. What I'm pushing for is getting as many of our missing and unaccounted for return to their families. So I'm hopeful one day we'll even surpass that. So I don't wanna be held to 200. I also want the families to know that if I get 200 within a year, I'm not gonna stop there because that's what some people are thinking, I think. So over time, we will get better. We believe that disintermits will continue to be a large portion of our identifications, largely because we don't yield a lot of remains out of when we do our recovery missions. When we do get remains, they're often very difficult to identify. And so I still have to answer to Congress about that 200 number. For families who are concerned about us going after the unknowns, think about it this way. If you're a family member and you get a phone call from DPAA, one that you weren't expecting because you've been told all these years that your loved one is gone forever. And we don't know what happened to him. But instead you get a call from DPAA. And because we've disinterred a set of unknowns, we've identified your servicemen. That's huge. And the benefit to that for the families to me outweighs the argument that we should spend all of our money in the field. Because if we spend all of our money in the field, we will never get to 200. It just won't happen. So over the years, I think disinterments will continue to be a mainstay. But again, we will also continue those very, very difficult field operations. Now, in order to do those field operations, we've also had to partner a lot external to DPAA. And I'll get to that in a minute. So for this year, we are on track, even with the budget cut. To make our identifications. This is a little bit busy slide, but I wanted to talk a little bit about 2018, what's ahead. Again, largely disinterments. Vietnam War will remain the priority for all of the reasons that I mentioned earlier. And this is all in keeping with our global campaign plan that we published back in late 2015. So we're staying the course and following the plan that we've designed. Beyond 2019, that will be for the new director to decide. And then for 2018, here's where we'll be. We're gonna be in 17 countries, conducting 24 investigation teams and 57 recoveries. That's a lot. But with all of the assistance with the services, because the combatant commands, especially Paycom, augment our teams. And so the majority of our teams are made up of augmentees led by DPAA, both military and civilian. And then of course, those are on the left hand bottom slide, part of the slide is where we'll be conducting our disinterments. And let me just pause a second on the disinterments. The other thing is we can't just disinter at will. There's a standard that has to be met. The deputy secretary of defense has established a policy that DPAA must follow. And before we can actually disinter a set of remains, we have to prove that we are confident that we can make an identification should those remains be disintered. And the way we do that is first we reach out and we try to find the families that we believe are possibly associated with that unknown to get the family reference samples. And the way we do that is as you saw in the video, you saw individuals doing the research, well we go to the National Archives, we look at military records, we look at health records, we look at unit records, daily reports, and we try to figure out who that unknown most likely is. When we're able to pull all of the biological information together and we're able to get family reference samples on file, then that disinterment packet is brought to me, I review it and then I make a recommendation on whether or not it gets disintered. And then it leaves DPAA and goes up through DOD for final approval. So disinterments, it's not an easy thing. Once we get the approval to disinter, then it's a little bit easier. And then the challenge becomes the actual ID piece of it. But getting to the authority to disinter is not an easy thing to do. So I talked a little bit about the challenges with our funding. Well, even though we have a good idea of what we're gonna get next year, because the President's budget still hasn't been approved, so it's gotta go through the process. So even though we have a good idea, there are still efficiencies that we have to find. So we are not gonna spend the public's money freely and without some type of responsibility. And so one of the things that we want to do is increase our external partners. So there are a number of organizations out there that have signed up to help us. And so with our partnerships, we currently have over 130 active or partnerships in development. When I came on board, there was one person working strategic partnering. Since then, that one individual now has another four or five people working for him. And we have grown the partnerships from about five or six when I came on board that weren't final to over 130. So that's huge. And of course our partners consist of what's listed on the top left-hand side, side of the slide, a pretty diverse range of both individuals and organizations that help us out. In addition to what you see on the slide, I'd like to focus just a little bit on the university piece of it. We're working with quite a number of universities today and we're promoting the unique and highly technical and scientific aspects of our mission to attract graduate students. And many of these graduate students find DPA attractive because it gives them field experience that they need. So like the picture that you see of the young man, the bottom portion of the pictures, he's from the University of New Orleans. And today we have a partnership with the University of New Orleans who's in coordination with the University of Innsbruck in Austria and the World War II Museum right here in New Orleans. They are currently working on a site of a Tuskegee Airman. We've located the site. We know it is the site. We're absolutely sure of that. We found some aircraft wreckage and some material evidence. So the only thing I can tell you right now is to watch this space, watch us on Twitter, watch us on Facebook and watch the news because I'm hopeful that we'll bring home yet another service member out of a partnering arrangement. In addition, just last week, I guess, my days are running together, I was also at Tuskegee University, signing an MOA with the University for them to conduct more research on not only the Tuskegee Airman, but also the 92nd Infantry Division just came back to me. And so Tuskegee has also agreed to find a graduate student for the next two years to work on that project to help us because at the end of the day, when we have 82,000, 26,000 of which are actionable, we will never get this done if we keep it solely internal to the government. We need help. And so these partners are standing up to help us out. Now, there's a partner that many of you might have heard of before and it's History Flight. History Flight has been working to recover remains of our Marines from Tarawa. Just last week, 25 sets, more than 25 sets. We know there's 25 for sure, they were able to recover some additional portions, but over 25 sets of remains were repatriated just this last week because we partnered with History Flight. So we're bringing in experts that are good at doing this mission and bringing them in, giving them guidance on what we need and they're the ones that are really helping to bring answers to a lot of our families. In fact, History Flight is responsible for bringing home a Medal of Honor recipient that I think you all have heard of before First Lieutenant Alexander Boneman and that repatriation is depicted in the top right of the slide with all of the flag-drape caskets. So this hub and spoke model that we use currently in DPAA where universities and partners are serving as the hub and then they spoke out to graduate students and other organizations to conduct recoveries has been a significant help to DPAA and most importantly, it's been a significant benefit to our families. And then finally, we have quite a number of underwater partnership recoveries that are going on and in fact, we had a successful recovery this month off the coast of Croatia, which is depicted in that picture on the left-hand side. The Croatian Navy partnered with us and they provided a Navy vessel and Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography conducted the dive and recovery effort in concert with DPAA personnel. Everyone involved to include the US Ambassador to Croatia and the Croatian Minister of Defense were incredibly inspired by the fusion of these efforts. Talk a little bit about technology for a quick second. I know those of you who have been following the accounting mission for years heard about case management requirement and the department's efforts of trying to bring a system online that the analysts, historians, archeologists and all the people that are doing the work behind the scenes have access to and they can share information. So our case management system is moving forward. We have built it. The challenge that we are facing right now is ingesting all of that data. That's not the hardest part though. A lot of the information that we currently hold is classified and of that bulk of classified information there's also some of it that's been declassified. So now we have to go through the process of finding the declass versions of the classified documents, loading them up and then bringing that system online. So the system is built. Now we're just going through the process of putting it together. IT was one of the other things that I was brought on to do and so we have pulled the right people together inside of DPAA which was important because I really needed to have all of the individuals or representation of the individuals who would touch the system to tell the IT personnel exactly what's needed. So we're that close to bringing that to fruition. In addition to the case management system which is the back end so the families and the public won't see that piece, the front end is what we're calling public portal. And depicted on that slide is a new initiative that we are working our way through. If you go to our webpage, www.dpaa.mil on the right hand side, I think it says review case files or something, you can click on it and get to this page where we have for Vietnam War established a personnel profile for all of the 1,606 missing from the Vietnam War. So it has a picture and a short synopsis of their loss. That's complete on the Vietnam side. We are now finishing the Korea losses and then of course we will attack World War II in tandem. So I think that's a great effort that hopefully the families will appreciate. But in addition to that, hopefully by the end of this year we will open up our public portal completely so that families can provide us information, we can provide feedback, they can collaborate order posters which oh by the way before you leave, can I just, can I advertise a poster? Yes we have, take as many as they want. So we sent some posters ahead to Vince of the PLW MIA recognition day. So you can order posters, sign up for the FMUs, et cetera. Now the public portal piece, although it's a great asset for the families when we do finally turn it on, it's an even bigger asset for those of us working in DPAA because what that technology is gonna now do is when someone goes on our website and types in information, makes a request, it no longer is gonna generate an email that someone has to read, catalog, and then type into an Excel spreadsheet. It's gonna automatically dynamically update a database that everybody on our side, the government side will have access to, to include the service casualty officers. So my dream is that this system will allow our service casualty officers and the defense PLW MIA accounting personnel to give you the same answer for the questions that family members are asking. Because that's really the challenge, the consistency and latency of information that's been provided. So both of these systems are gonna help us with that, I believe, over time. I often like to equate where DPAA is to when I came into the Army as a PFC. I was not, I didn't come in and Intel, I started in as a personnel admin specialist and a typist. And I remember when I showed up to my AIT, the qualification for typing was on a black manual typewriter. That's where DPAA is. It's the, and then the things get stuck together, remember that? And then we went from the manual typewriter to this electric, to the word processor, to the computer. Right, the ball spin, and then it was great when they did the backspace and then it deleted. Right, that was awesome. That's... That's right, the old Underwoods. That's where DPAA is. I mean, we're still touching and holding very fragile documents, as opposed to going to a computer system where everything's digitized. And so we're moving forward in the agency to the point where we will be able to dynamically share information and provide answers, which is the most important thing, providing answers to the families. So I'm very, if you can't tell, I'm very excited about that portion of my job, which is why I can't wait for a new director to come on board. Talking about families, we travel around the world seven times a year, and then we have two family member updates, excuse me, two government meetings held in Washington, D.C. So if you are a family member, if you're a family member, please take note of these dates, or you can go to our website, it's located there as well, and come see us. One of the things we would ask that you do is don't just show up, go to our website and sign up for the family member update, because you can also request an update on your individual case. And our analysts will take your case, do a review, and give you the latest information that we have about the loss. For a lot of the cases, the information has been static, because again, we have a lot of cases that we're working on, but what it will do is it will bring highlight to your individual case. And the family member updates are conducted much like this. What we do is I give an opening and then I bring in all my subject matter experts to talk in depth about some of the stuff that I just sort of glossed over today. Also, before I forget, if you are in Honolulu, please call DPA, or you can access us through our webpage. Please come and take a tour of the lab. Now, we don't have open tours, but if you contact us and schedule one, we prefer to do small groups. So if your family's on vacation, you can bring the kids, as long as they're not screaming, it's because you will see, you'll walk by the lab and you might see some remains. But other than that, it's a great tour. And I think we've come light years from where we were just five years ago, even. So I have talked enough. As this slide depicts, we have a lot of support, not only across the Department of Defense, the secretary, the under for policy, but also our host nations and our partners. But the strongest piece of DPAA, are the individuals like that young sergeant right there, who dive, who put their hands in muck, who scream, rice patty, muck to bring home a serviceman. That's what we do. We're here to stay. We're getting better. We still have a way to go. There are many more processes and procedures that we need to put in place to tighten up our shot group a little bit. But we're gonna get there. I personally am committed to not only the families, but to the secretary and whatever decision he makes about a director to continue to move forward and to push this agency as far as it possibly can go. Thank you so much. And I look forward to answer any questions.