 Hey, good morning and welcome to our audience watching this virtual Town Hall online as we live stream on Divid's Facebook and Twitter. This morning we have the Honorable Ryan McCarthy, Secretary of the Army, General James McEnville, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Sergeant Major of the Army, Tony Grenston. Gentlemen, good morning and thank you for taking time for questions in this virtual Town Hall. Like the nation, the Army is confronting COVID-19 and has made adjustments so it can protect the force to ensure it can protect the nation. This Town Hall is a chance to hear from you, our Army senior leaders, as you answer frequently asked questions from soldiers, families, and DA civilians on Army standards, policies, and programs as they relate to COVID-19. I'll turn it over to all of you for opening comments starting with Secretary McCarthy and then we'll get into some questions for the next 30 minutes or so. Mr. Secretary, sir. Thanks, Kurt. Good morning, everyone, and obviously we live in extraordinary times. As I sit here flanked by my teammates, we're sitting in an empty auditorium as we're trying to exhibit the behaviors of social distancing and ensuring we can protect the force as we manage ourselves through these extraordinary conditions. These are truly extraordinary times that we live in and it takes measures and great people to get through that. The Army has been truly remarkable in its performance, really starting with the leadership of men like General Abe Abrams and General Roger Cloutier, who both in Korea and Italy respectively, who were on the front end of this challenge. And both of these men and their leadership teams acted quickly and decisively and have shared their lessons learned as we've combated this extraordinary event in our lives. And it's helped the Army gauge itself to move quickly and decisively, none more so than the installation commanders all over the earth of how quickly they've moved at a decentralized nature and have really done everything they can to protect the formations in the family's house on those installations. With over 19,000 soldiers deployed across the 50 states and four territories and thousands more in the queue from our National Guard, they are on the front end providing logistical capability, medical first responders, as well as active duty units from the 101st 4th ID and 1st CAV that were among the first to go in New York and Washington. I know the chief will talk about that here in a second. But the other things to look forward to, the medical research and development command, which is led by General Mike Talley, doing an amazing job 24 hours a day, two 12 hour shifts, seven days a week pursuing a vaccine. There are 24 candidates across five different tracks that have four of which are in human testing. This is the most extraordinary collaborative event in vaccination research, maybe in the history of mankind, and they're moving at a quick pace. The Army's vaccine candidate in particular is moving into the primate testing this summer. So a lot to look forward to, but more so than anything, it's just the performance and resilience of our men and women helping their fellow countrymen and still meeting national objectives worldwide with over 191,000 troops deployed. Chief? Well, thank you, Secretary. And you know, in the Army, we talk about people first. And when we talk about people, we're talking about our soldiers. We're talking about our families. We're talking about our civilians. We're talking about our soldiers for life, our retirees and veterans. And every one of our people has been in the fight. And I just want to say how proud I am of each and every one of you. This is disrupted everyone's life. And everyone is doing their share of the task and maybe washing their hands and maybe social distancing. It may be sheltering in place to minimize their exposure. It may be the medical professionals that I saw in New York City that stood up the Javis Center and right now are treating COVID-19 patients and helping out the New York City. It may be the medical professionals that I saw out in Washington State that put up a field hospital in a couple of days and are there to support the state. And as the Secretary said, our scientists that are working around the clock to get a vaccination, to do high-speed testing, and to get some treatment to help us defeat the virus. Our reserve forces have stood up 15 urban augmentation task forces that are being deployed right now. Our National Guard is in every single state doing incredible things. So this is a super team effort coming together to both protect the force and protect the nation at the same time while we have about 190,000 soldiers deployed in 140 countries throughout the world. So I just want to say to all of you how impressed I am with you, how proud I am of what you're doing. And I'd like to turn it over to Sergeant Major for some comments. Mr. Secretary Tief, I just want to start with saying, echoing what Chief just said about how we are so proud of everybody and what they've done to stay fit during this time. When you talk about fit, discipline, and a cohesive team, when actually things go bad, I think you can get through bad times if you have a fit, disciplined, and cohesive team. And to me, it's very clear that we have a disciplined force that can follow those orders that are given to us because we can't mobilize a team that's sick. So you've got to protect the force. We protect the force. They're disciplined. They did the measures that they needed to do. They came together, and then we could actually send those forces out to those places like New York and Washington. So when the nation called on our soldiers, our soldiers were ready. And that's what it means to be, protect the force in order so we can protect the nation. I'm very proud of everybody and what they've done. And we've got to stay disciplined. We've got to stay healthy and stay fit. Thank you, gentlemen. First question we'll take, we hear a lot online, or see a lot online, has to do with social distancing. As you mentioned in your opening comments, Mr. Secretary-in-Chief, social distancing is a big thing. You're six feet apart on stage. Big question that we're seeing online is how are units supposed to train while adhering to social distancing and other CDC guidelines? You want to take that one? Yeah, I'll take this and I'll get us our major, get a chance is, you know, the force still has to be ready to fight. We still have adversaries out there that wish us harm. We still have soldiers in combat. But what it really comes down to is, how do you train while protecting the force? And you can do physical fitness, just keep six feet apart. You can do small unit training. We like to talk about our squads with five meters between soldiers and a wedge. And what we're asking commanders to do is recognize what the threat is where they're at. And this virus is a threat. And we have to change the way we do business. And we got to minimize exposure. And we also need to make sure that we're taking care of our soldiers. So some large collective training is not going on. We canceled major training exercises like Defender 20. We canceled combat training rotations to protect the force. And we expect every commander to do that. Sergeant Major? Yes, sir. It's about having the bubble also, is making sure once we don't let the virus in to our little group. We do our social distancing. We keep our hands clean. And then we can still do our individual tasks. Those are normally done at the team and the squad level. You got to keep some spacing. But the most important thing is, don't let the virus into your organization. And then you can do the training that the leadership has asked you to do. On a related topic on Sunday, the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense Esper issued a policy on the wearing and guidance of protective masks for DOD personnel. Can we get an explanation of the guidance? I'll start when I think we have the chiefness and may join in as well. The rationale behind the policy is that ultimately, if you cannot exhibit six-foot distance like we have here on stage, that it is encouraged to wear a protective mask. Now, recognizing that not everyone may have a mask in hand, you can use a neck gaiter here in the interim, I think we'll be publishing some guidance on this for the interim. But in about seven to 10 days, we'll have several million masks on hand to distribute to the force. But this was a protective measure out of abundance of caution so that when soldiers are in environments where they cannot be able to exhibit the six-foot minimum distance for social distancing to wear a protective mask. Chief, you want anything? Yeah, this is all about protecting the force. Again, we wanna protect the force so we can protect the nation. And we're putting measures, it runs from washing your hands to social distancing, to wearing masks. And we do, we're working right now to get the masks out to the troops. They have it, but there's a lot of innovation going on. I was up at the First Special Forces Group in Washington State. They're making their own masks and mass producing them. And our acquisition professionals expect to have the masks out in the next week and we'll be able to do that. Son Major. There's an immediate, and then I think there's more like a near term. In the immediate, we're gonna do, like the secretary said, we're gonna get those masks, non-surgical masks. If it's a medical mask, we need all those masks to go to the medical professionals. The second thing is, don't sous-pente and then start cutting up your uniform and then throw in, cause I wanna have a camouflage and throw that on your face. Those are non-rigal uniforms, you don't want that. We're gonna get you the masks. You've got either a neck gaiter, a scarf, or something else that you can use, some black neck gaiter, brown, some kind of scarf. That's fine. There's not gonna be, this is gonna be it. We're gonna get you in the near term, we'll get you something either black camouflage to put on, but until then, use common sense. Don't wanna see any skull and crossbones on your face. Maybe a brown or something that looks somewhat professional or a non-surgical mask, that's fine. I just do, I do wanna reinforce what the serge major said about using uniforms. Our uniforms are treated with chemicals for various reasons. And so we do not want people using these uniforms and putting them close to their face. Thank you, gentlemen. One of the most talked about changes online has been the permanent change of station pause. And the latest guidance addresses the opportunities to defer assignments due to COVID hardships under nearly all circumstances, except those for those individuals attending professional military education of six months or longer. Is there any additional guidance forthcoming? And what is just the general guidance on PCS? So the Department of Defense has halted the PCS moves until May 11th. We are currently in conversations with the office of the Secretary of Defense about how would we execute a PCS season as safely as possible? So a lot of the things we're working on right now are what are the risk mitigation measures we could put in place to ensure household goods and individuals could move all around the country worldwide if necessary, with respect to the specifics behind the prioritization that'll be worked out as well. But this also presents opportunities, chief. You can talk about the stabilization or some of those things. Yeah, one of the things, you know, first of all, the reason we stopped the moves is quite frankly, we want to take care of our soldiers and families and for their health and welfare. Now we know doing that, there are some families that had moved, they're furnishing, they might have moved their cars, they're sitting in hotel rooms. And that's why we have two things going on. One is an exception to policy. If they're experiencing such a hardship or this is really putting them in a bad way, then what we want them to do is go ahead and request an extension, an exception to policy so they can actually move under this directive. On the other hand, we do have the ability to compensate them for the money they're putting out during this timeframe. And over the next 60 days, the other thing we've asked and something I've been an advocate for is I'd like to see us stabilize families longer, leave them in a place longer and there's ways we can do that, whether it's doing more online type of professional military education so they can stay and not leave the families. But if we can leave the family and families should go back to the human resource command and say that they do want to stabilize and if we can keep them there for another year or so, we'd like them to do that. Sergeant Major. That's still a, we definitely want to be able to stabilize our soldiers, make sure they also go back to their chain of command, then go to HRC, but also go back to your chain of command and say I'm already on that assignment and on a case by cases, we're going to look at that so we don't hurt the readiness of any organization, but we do want to stabilize them. You have to just go back, submit a 4187 through your current chain of command that goes to HRC and request to stabilize where you're at right now. Thank you, gentlemen. Another very popular topic online is the recent announcement that the Army is putting the ACFT on hold or suspending it for the time being. How long do we expect it to be suspended and is the current APFT still going to be valid? Yeah, first of all, the Army fitness test is the test that's in place. As many know, the future test is gonna be the Army Combat Fitness Test and we've issued equipment to many of the units. Not all the units have the equipment yet and so what we will do with the import of the SARD majors and commanders is we will come to a decision in the future about how we implement the Army Combat Fitness Test. People still have the opportunity to work out right now and we want their focus to be working on those events that are associated with the Army Combat Fitness Test because that's the test that actually gets you ready for combat. But as far as when that's actually gonna be implemented, it's gonna depend that the conditions are set and by conditions set, that means that all the units have the equipment, all the units have had time to get their soldiers ready to take the test and when those conditions are set, we'll make that decision. Sergeant Major. So currently the APFT is still the test that's gonna keep you in good standings with the Army meaning that if you had failed the APFT, you still have a failed APFT. If you have a current APFT, that's gonna carry you until the conditions are set that we can either shift to the ACFT in the near future but that's not made yet but the current, if you have a current and valid APFT, that is still what's gonna keep you in good standings with the Army. Thank you, gentlemen. The Reserve Component obviously is playing a big fighter, the National Guard and the Army Reserves. Mr. Secretary, you mentioned 19,000 soldiers deployed, a great many of them being from the Reserve Component. Are they, has it been worked out that they are entitled and have the same benefits as their active duty counterparts? Yes, there was initially, when they were working out the paper with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, what they have to do is a state comes forward, New York and they request, they declare a public health emergency or a natural disaster and they request federal support and they have, it's a legal mechanism called Title 32 where they can put a National Guard unit under a federally funded status and it provides maximum latitude for the governor in this case to exercise all of the capabilities necessary to respond. When they were working out the paperwork for the mission assignment, initially it didn't have the appropriate number of days that to get north of 31 days where they can have all of the benefits. The Army staff was very helpful in working this out with the Office of Management and Budget and now it is all north of the 31 days required so all of those benefits should be provided to all of these guardsmen that are out on the front edge. Anything you wanna add, Chief? I just wanna just kinda highlight what a fabulous job our Army National Guard and Army Reserves are doing and are they there in the communities doing some incredible work and they are really making a difference. Grooming standards is a topic that for both male and female can you clarify what the current policy is for the Army grooming standards for female and male haircuts now that the barber shops are closed and is there any intention to implement a relaxed grooming standard? I wanna let the Sergeant Major talk about that. No, a little about that because that's what Sergeant Major's discussion and but what the Sergeant Major will talk about is when people talk about relaxed grooming standards you have to start from what the standard is then we can have the discussion. So Sergeant Major, the pair of the standards why don't you go ahead and take that one? I think everybody just needs to know what the standard is and I'll speak to my Sergeant Major and my NCOs know what the standards are and maybe not go overboard. I said, oh, I wanna make it sure it's extra close and high and tight. Know what the standard is. The standard is neatly groomed. When your hair for males, when the hair is combed it doesn't fall in the eyebrows. It's not on the ears. I know you're wanting more but it's very clear what the regulation says but sometimes we wanna and we always wanna overachieve on the standard on this one. I think we just need to understand what the standards are. I think when you read what the standards are and don't read into it and just follow that guidance I think we're gonna be fine. And I think for the females it's short, medium and long hair, different styles. There may be a little bit more flexibility there's no need to change what those standards are but like I said I think if we just follow those guidance of what the actual standard is I think we're gonna be just fine. Yeah so as the Sergeant Major said what the intent is is meet the standard that's in the regulation and then if there's a problem with meeting the standard the idea that your hair is over your ears or your hair is over your eyes we can have that discussion and probably issue a pair of scissors to the people that have that issue. So you would be exceeds. You meet. I meet the standard. Everybody meets the standard. Thank you gentlemen. The Department of Defense a week or so ago or about 10 days ago also issued a hold on redeploying units for the most part with the exception of Afghanistan in some cases. How long should units who are deploying or redeploying from either a combat deployment or a named operation deployment or training exercise expect to be in a holding pattern? Well I think I'll go and take that one as you know each unit is gonna be in a different situation. I would say that the intent is to get units back from training exercises as soon as the exercise is over or if there's a change in conditions for them to come back and when they do come back we need to make sure that they go through the proper screening and quarantine exercises to make sure that we protect them and protect their families when they come back as far as for combat operations right now is some troops are staying longer and I just wanna go out to the families of those troops that they are doing incredibly important work. Some have had to stay longer than what maybe their nine months was gonna be and what I can say is they are really making a difference and as soon as their mission is complete we will get them back and get them with you but again they are really making a difference what they're doing is very, very important and we are extremely proud of them and proud of the families who are supporting them while they are deployed. Sir you mentioned quarantine, when they do come back is there a set period of time for the quarantine? Is it still the two weeks or has it been? It is 14 days, that seems to be the safe figure with no symptoms of 14 days. What we're trying to do right now is get more testing out and I think what you're gonna see over the next couple of months we're gonna be a much more robust position to do more testing which is gonna help us manage the force better under these conditions. Another question we have is related to the PME particularly the enlisted side whether it be SLC or MLC. We know that USMA has gone to virtual schooling we know that the War College has done that a little bit from the NCOAS side is there a plan to go virtual there or suspend any of that particular schooling? Absolutely and not the United States Military Academy but the United States Sergeant Major's Academy has gone to virtual they're doing it even though they have PCS there they're using backboard.com to keep up with their studies and we've also found that we could actually still do BLC we did a couple of virtual BLCs where we would do a VTC from Italy up to Germany out of 7th ATC so BLC the basic leader course and the United States Army Sergeant Major's Academy are still going on virtually. We have actually suspended the select train and educate promote policy for ALC and SLC the advanced leaders course and the senior leaders course so those sergeants that are eligible and good standing with all the qualifications meet the cutoff score they will be promoted to staff sergeant and those staff sergeants that are eligible that need to be promoted they will get promoted to Sergeant First Class. There's two ways that you can make up the PME the professional military education they can actually go back and take the class once we move the stop move or your unit can go in and say I've done all the critical tasks I've been in a squad leader position and I can ask to be promoted without the course so there are two ways an exception of policy to get promoted without the course for ALC and SLC or you can go back and actually do the school. Thank you and following up on that Sergeant Major the promotion boards in general particularly the local ones are they still ongoing? How have they been affected by this situation in your conversations with the NCS? Yeah, absolutely and we've so promotion boards are still going we can do them virtually I mean we're you know I'll echo what the chief has said we have learned some things that we can do and all across where it's a virtual board where it's a virtual reenlistment we've seen those two so you can still submit the package for the board the battalion commander still has time on the board so the Sergeant Major can have you do a virtual board you can do board packets and that's all within the authorities of the battalion commander at the appropriate level so the boards are still happening soldiers are still reenlisting we're just finding great and new creative ways to do this and I agree with the chief this is gonna really show what we can do in the future if we have to. News yesterday indicated that news from Treynock yesterday was that they plan to make some adjustments to initial entry training particularly on the shipment end and obviously as they organize the first couple of weeks of basic training how exactly is basic training the shipment recruits being affected by COVID? Now this gets back to all about how do we take care of soldiers that come in the army you know their parents are sending us their sons and daughters and what we want to do is make sure that we're providing an extremely safe environment so what we've done is we're pausing for 14 days and that'll allow really the situation in the country to settle down it's also allowing us to get all the testing capability into our initial entry military training sites and so we're doing that right now as we speak and so as the soldiers come in to initial military training they will be segregated, they will be screened we'll make sure that they go into this protective bubble they'll be doing physical fitness and then we'll have the testing in place to make sure there's no issues with any exposure to COVID-19 and then they will go through the normal training that they've done and then even when they move from these bases we're again putting them in a protective bubble allowing them to move on to their follow on assignments and training and by doing this we think we're gonna be able to take care of all these young men and women that are coming into the military in the best way. I'd like to just remember the army's still open we're still doing active recruiting the recruiting stations may be closed we're doing virtual recruiting so if anybody wants that's out there that's ready to join the army we're still open for business we're still bringing those in we're just finding new creative ways to do our virtual recruiting and we're pausing on the assessions coming in but we're still doing the sessions training basic training are still going and the army is still open for business. So we made an initial decision to pause for two weeks do we think we're going to be able to turn it back on in two weeks or we're gonna have to reassess that? No we do we feel very comfortable with the procedures that we have in place and what we've also done which we've never done in the past is if a soldier is unable to ship they've gone through the entire process and they're ready to ship and they come from an area that we're not shipping from we will basically put them on the payroll and allow them to be compensated basically reporting to the recruiting station they can continue the workout and get fit and then we'll bring them in the army when the conditions allow them to be shipped and again this is a good time to join the army you get to be part of something bigger than yourself you get to be part of one of the most respected teams in the country and you get a part to really make a difference so as the Sergeant Major said as the army's open we're still hiring we're asking soldiers that may be leaving going to a very difficult situation if they like to stay and they meet the standards and they can stay I don't know if you want to say anything on that Sergeant Major. Yes sir. If they want to extend we got a 12 months extension that can say I don't feel like it's a good time to get out of the army if you meet all the standards to stay in the army just go back and see your retention NCOs see you change your command and they'll go ahead and do that extension paperwork. It's important to also emphasize that General Muth and Sergeant Major Gevia had been performing so well that command is performing so well with recruiting that they have margin in their objective for the year so that even with this down month taking this tactical pause to set the conditions we believe that we're still in very good shape touch wood as I say that but they've found a way to really manage every soldier from hotspots in the country to defer their timing and to bring them in as safely as possible really a remarkable job by USEREC. Sir, speaking of USEREC the new virtual recruiting programs and tactics that are obviously in place because of this one of the questions is how long are the recruiting stations gonna be closed and two, how are those tactics in those programs going given the current recruiting environment? Well, they'll be reopened when the conditions are such to be safe enough to get back into the office but I think it's important to the points that the chief and the SMA have made repeatedly we're finding different ways and they're also becoming very effective it may change the business model over time of how we recruit people less of the brick and mortar more of the virtual and then ultimately when they go to sign a contract they meet face to face. We've learned a lot from this next generation and they spend a lot of their time in the virtual space and that's how we find means to communicate with them. Chief, anything you wanna add? No, I think, Secretary, you said exactly right is out of every crisis is opportunity and opportunity to learn and so what we wanna do is take a look at the way we've been doing business which in some ways has been industrial age and we wanna move into the information age and we're finding is where those information technologies are most effective and we're gonna take advantage of that we're gonna learn from that and we're gonna grow. Another hot topic on folks for families are obviously the child development centers just like everything else are affected on some of the installations. Why are some CDC's closing on some posts and then they're open on others? What's the variance there? Well, I'll take that. I mean, what we've done is again we're looking at protecting the soldiers in their families and I looked at number there I think we have about 200 and maybe 40 or 50 that are still open. There are some closed. I know that's very difficult on the families that use them but it's really managing risk. We have child development centers open for mission essential personnel and first responders that actually need that and then at the same time some are closed and it's really come down to protecting the people that are taking care of our kids and making sure the kids are safe too and what we wanna do is provide a safe environment and so I made you have anything you wanna add on that? Even though some of the CDC closed I'd ask if you're struggling with how to get to work and how to take care of my children and communicate with your chain of command and sometimes we do wanna be mission focused and I applaud all those folks I would just ask those that are having trouble where your CDC is closed. Don't try to go at this alone. There's a lot of people that are out there to help you and go back and say I've got, I'm torn. My spouse in their civilian job made me mission critical. I heard this one yesterday. My spouse is mission critical but then my army job says I'm mission critical too. Go to your chain of command and explain that to them and don't try to take that hardship on your own and I'm certain that we'll make the right choices. I just wanna reinforce with this Sergeant Major, so we have an obligation during tough times to take care of our families and they are a priority and it's about people first and so we should be able to work our way through those types of challenges. One final question gentlemen. I know there's been questions about the testing capability that the army has. Could we get an elaboration on exactly the testing capability we have at our MTFs either CONUS, OCONUS and deployed? Yeah, what we've done is we're in the process of really ramping that capability up. We have nine labs that we can test that but there's new machines coming on board. I wouldn't call a biofire that we're sitting down range and to all our critical sites where you can test on the spot. We've got these Gen X, both four and 16 that are coming online. They're gonna give us increased throughput and then there's a large machine. It's called a Panther Fusion Machine that really is gonna give us the capability that we need. What you really want is a lot of throughput. A throughput capability so you can do a lot of testing and that's how you safeguard the force and all those machines are coming in. They're probably not, they didn't come as quick as we like them. And another test we're looking at which we think is really important. The testing machines that I talked about, they tell you whether you have it or not. What I'm interested as the Chief and I'm the Secretary and Sergeant Majors, have you had it? We may have had soldiers that already had it that had no symptoms and we won't know. So there's testing that's coming out, not here yet but it will show whether you've actually had the virus and that will help us manage risk in the force. Only thing I'd add to the Chief's points is that the U.S. government put in place essentially a nationwide prioritization. So many of the machines that were in the U.S. government's inventory went to New York and went to New Jersey in some of these hardest hit areas in the country. But to the points that the Chief made, there's a tremendous amount of capability flowing into the Department of Army over the next three weeks. And we'll have this at all of our installations in a very robust capacity across the force. Well gentlemen, that's all the questions that we have. Thank you for your time. I'll turn it over to the three of you for any final comments. Give us somebody to last word. Yes, Sergeant Major. Okay, so I'd just like to say, life kind of just threw us a curve ball. And that's just kind of the way life is. It's not always the fast ball right down the middle. This is a little bit of a curve ball. We've got the greatest army in the world and we're just gonna have to adjust. You're gonna adjust your goals, re-establish new goals, reconnect with your family, find some things that motivate you through this time of need or crisis. And just a good friend of mine told me one time, he said, this uniform around the world means two things. Right now, depending on where you're at, this uniform means hope. It means hope that when the United States Army, active guard or reserve show up, that my situation in the United States is gonna get better. But it still means fear around the world too. That means if you mess with the United States Army, that this uniform will come and we have to be ready to strike fear in our adversaries. Thank you. Thank you, John.