 Mark Esper and I'm the Secretary of Defense. Welcome to today's Department of Defense Virtual Town Hall. I'm joined today by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and by the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman, Cologne Lopez. I want to begin by thanking the 50,000-plus service members who are on the front lines today fighting the fight against the coronavirus. You've made us all very proud and very impressed by your service, your skill, and your selflessness. The accomplishments that you're making in states and cities around the country are remarkable and the American people appreciate it. I know I deeply appreciate it as well. For many of you, you're risking your own health and welfare as well, and so you have our highest regard and respect. With regard to those forces out there, as many of you know, the Department of Defense has been all in from day one. Over two-plus months now, going back to January, we have over 28,000 National Guardsmen activated in every state and the territories. We have thousands of active component and reserve component soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines enlisting their support around the country. We have 15,000 Army Corps of Engineers personnel and 1,700 deployed around the country helping create and expand hospital capacity in several states. In fact, to date, they have conducted over 800 site surveys around the country. We also have deployed a number of Army-filled hospitals and Navy Expeditionary Medical Units. We have eight Urban Medical Task Force deploying. They're going to cities such as New York where they are most employed. We're in Seattle, Chicago. We will be going to Detroit, New Orleans, Dallas, and elsewhere. So those doctors and nurses, other medical professionals, and other service members are doing Yeoman's work out on the front lines. The Mercy and Comfort, as many of you know, are also docked in Los Angeles and New York providing critical support and prepared to address overflow capacity as needed. On top of that, we've provided a number of medical equipment to our colleagues in HHS and FEMA. We've provided 10 million masks. We've provided and transported millions of swabs from abroad, test swabs. We've also provided ventilators and other pieces of personal protective equipment to our colleagues at FEMA and HHS to distribute around the country. On top of that, our top tier research scientists and medical professionals are helping work with the private sector to come up with a vaccine. They're also working to develop therapeutics to help us get through this crisis as quickly as possible. And on top of that, we continue to maintain our top mission, that is making sure the United States remains safe and secure. As many of you know, I've outlined three priorities from day one. First, protect our people. Take care of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, our civilians, and their families. Number two, ensure that we preserve our essential mission capabilities so we can continue defending the American people, the United States of America, and our interests abroad. And priority number three, provide full support to the whole of government, whole nation response that we are orchestrating right now. As you know, everyone must do their part to reduce the spread of the virus. We see some light at the end of the tunnel, but we're far from being out of the woods. At this point in time, I encourage you, urge you to follow the President of the United States's 30-day plan and CDC guidance to help reduce the spread of the virus. As you know, the CDC recently outlined guidance, additional guidance with regard to face coverings. We immediately also put out our policy on face coverings as well. That face covering says where social distancing is not possible, where you cannot get outside of six feet, then you should wear a face covering if you're off a DOD installation. If you're on a DOD installation or base or facility, it is required. Many of our adversaries, as you know, are trying to exploit this crisis. So it's important that we maintain readiness. I have full faith and confidence in our commanders and our senior NCOs to balance mission requirements and force health protection. It's absolutely critical that we do so. Lastly, I like to say that we will ensure four deployed troops receive the support and resources they need to accomplish their very critical national security missions. With that, I'll wrap up by saying I'm very, very proud of all of our service members, whether you're deployed on the front lines of this fight or not, whether you're deployed abroad conducting your national security mission or not, and of course our families. It's been tough times here in the United States and many of you have again put your own health and wherefore are on the line to help protect your fellow Americans. So you have my highest regard, my respect and my pride, and I want to thank you for all that. These are difficult times, but I'm confident we will get through this together and we'll be stronger and more resilient on the back end. With that, I'd like to turn over the stage to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. Chairman? Secretary, I appreciate that and good morning everyone that's out there. I want to just highlight a couple of things that the Secretary just mentioned. What you heard was a wide variety of capabilities in supplies and hospitals, troops, 50,000 troops, 19 hospitals just out of the Army, seven out of the Navy, two out of the Air Force, operating in five different cities taking care of patients all over the place. And what you see in addition to the comfort and the mercy is a significant level of effort by your military. And all of you, each one of you, whether you're directly contributing to the COVID fight and one of the 50,000 or whether you're in the remainder of the 2.3 million that are in uniform, every one of you makes us proud. Every one of you is making a contribution. And we will continue to do that. We're going to continue to defend our country. We're going to continue to provide the mission assurance around the world. We're also going to continue to protect the American people from the ravages of COVID-19 and we will continue to take care of our troops and our families. So all of you are making a significant contribution to the defense of the United States. You make all of us proud. We just ask a couple of things. One, as you do pay attention to the guidance that's been put out by the CDC and the president. Two, is that you use the chain of command. We think that information flow up and down the chain of command has been significant over the last several weeks. We encourage you to continue to use that. And third, is take care of each other. And if you see something or someone that is challenged with COVID-19, please speak up, help them out, and get them to the right medical facility. Thank you. And I'll turn it over to the G.A. Thank you, chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. So again, our purpose for doing this town hall is twofold. Number one is to continue to arm you with the facts on what we need to do to get past this pandemic. And number two is to continue to cover our blind spots, the things that we haven't considered yet in order to best help you. Because it is the feedback from the field that is going to really help us get to the root cause of a lot of problems and generate solutions. So as we continue to navigate through this minefield, I want to make sure that you all know that we appreciate your candor, your expedient feedback, but most importantly your support to one another. We're here to learn from you and other to tailor our guidance to best care for you and your families. And I will tell you that both the secretary and the chairman have both been really receptive to the feedback from you. So help us continue making it better for everyone. So with that said, let's go ahead and take questions. The first question is from an anonymous Facebook user who's asking, is there going to be a stop-loss declaration coming? I'd pose that to the secretary. I doubt it. I think it's very unlikely. It would be a measure of last resort and it would be very surgically focused. But again, I think it's very unlikely. It's fair to say, as I said, my opening remarks, we can see some light out there as we see the coronavirus flatten in areas where we see cities say they no longer need our support. But we're not out of the woods yet. But to me, again, it's a last resort, but very unlikely. Great. And to the secretary and the chairman, we have a question from an army wife based in D.C. I understand the COVID-19 situation is uncertain, but soon we will be approaching the summer PCS season. How will this play out if there are still widespread or localized COVID outbreaks? Will the service members still PCS? Who's coordinating these decisions? It's a very good question. I'll take first stab at it and then let the chairman respond. It's something that we've discussed a number of times. We will be having another meeting today on this matter. Obviously, we're going to take guidance from the CDC with regard to when things might be able to open up. What we're trying to figure out now or what are the key dates by which we have to consider opening up the system again for PCS moves and some of the priorities that we're focused on are probably first those families with school-aged kids. We know that you need to get to your next assignment and get the kids in school. I know that's a particular concern. So as we think through these issues, we're thinking through who are the most affected parties and then what are the ways by which we prioritize it? Is it by school-aged kids? Maybe it's by location by which we can release people either from or to the next assignment. It will involve movers availability. It's movers and packers. What is their availability to do that? And if we suspect there may be some lingering effects of coronavirus, what is the medical capability on the other end? So we're trying to consider all those factors. It involves the services, the joint staff, and of course transportation command because transportation command orchestrates the packers and movers. So we're trying to take a very deliberate approach. We know there's a date out there by which we must decide and determine if we're going to help people either get their kids in school, get to the next assignment, get to the next professional schooling, whatever the case may be. But we know that is a major milestone and we're working pretty aggressively on it. I would add that the first is probably too early to tell with any sort of definitive guidance as to what the summer will bring. We are clearly from a policy standpoint looking to try to open things up in the summer. But the very first priority is the health of the soldier, sailor, airman, marine, the family member, the child, etc. So we don't want to do anything that places the health of our force at risk. So if that means further delay, then it means further delay. We will work through that though as the summer months come. We're very, very sensitive as the Secretary just said to school-aged children. And we know that the summer surge is there. There's a lot of factors that go into it. But the very first priority is the health of the troops and the families. Excellent. And I'll pose the next question to the Chairman. This comes from Alison Richardson from Fort Bragg. When is the decision going to be made about the 82nd Airborne's 1BCT extension going to be made? Yeah, the Secretary and I are monitoring that along with the CENTCOM commander. You're talking about the first brigade of the 82nd that's sitting in the Middle East right now. They were deployed back in January as a measure in order to deter any further aggression by Iran and incidents surrounding the embassy or elsewhere in Iraq. And right now they're still there. The COVID crisis came upon us midstream. We redeployed one of the battalions, one of the maneuver battalions. But the remainder of the brigade tasked with the brigade combat team has stayed there in part because of the COVID crisis, but also in part because the situation with the Shia militia groups in Iran, et cetera, has not 100% settled down. So we're going to do what we need to do in order to protect our force, protect our embassies, protect our troops in Iraq. We have a mission to accomplish and the 82nd is America's Guard of Honor and they will continue their mission until such time as we think the threat has subsided. But we are monitoring it almost daily actually to determine exactly when to bring them home. The Secretary is very keen on bringing them home, but it's dependent upon the overall security situation between Iraq and Iran. Thank you. The next question is for the SEAC and this is from Tim Galloway of the Air Force. Why are we letting the Air Force cadets graduate basic military training continue and waivers for TDYs, but deployed members are unable to rotate home? That is a great question. It's something that keeps popping up. We're getting a lot of questions with regards of when our deployed forces are coming home. But the one point that I would like to make is that we have to maintain a balance between the lethality of our force and readiness and also the safety of our people. We have decided to go ahead and provide the Secretary of Best Military Advice memo in which the service secretaries ended up agreeing to go ahead and take a passing training to go ahead and reassess the safest way to continue to feed the machine of the services. Also, in addition to that, we have to keep in mind that each case is going to be different from location to location in basic entry requirements to deployments to TDYs, everything is going to be conditions-based. And again, every decision that is going to be made to approve those waivers, it's got to be safety-driven to ensure we keep our people safe. If I could just add something on that because it's a very good point that the SEAC made, but the current curtailment of deployed personnel is critical to the current readiness of the force and the health of those persons. It's vitally important that we continue to access folks into those armed services, whether they are officers coming through the Air Force Academy or enlisted personnel coming into any of the services-based military training. The continued infusion of those persons into the force is critical to the future readiness of the United States military. And I know the services are taking all practical measures to exercise social distancing, to test young Americans coming into the service, taking considerable effort to make sure we get that right. But we must continue to maintain that pipeline coming into the United States military. And another question on PCS-ing, one will consideration be made for service members who PCS overseas on a dependent restricted tour? My tour is up yet I've been extended along with many others. And this comes from Chief Warrant Officer Benjamin Ride and Howard, who's based in Kuwait. Again, same answer really as before. The first priority is the health and welfare of the troops. So we don't want to be PCS-ing or moving anyone anywhere unless we feel very confident that all appropriate mitigation measures are in place for that individual. We're hopeful that we're going to open up here shortly. I don't want to put a date on it and get false expectations raised out there. But I think we're probably looking at opening it up sometime in the summer from a matter of policy. And yes, there is a sacrifice if you're on an unaccompanied tour or an accompanying tour for that matter. If you're being extended, there's a degree of sacrifice to that. But it's all being done with the intent of keeping you and your family safe. And that's why we put the stop move and rules into effect and hopefully they'll loosen up here shortly. Great. And I would pose the next question to the Secretary and the SEAC if you'd like to weigh in. What measures will be set in place for transportation offices to ensure our packers and movers are COVID-free? Sure. That will be part of the discussion we're having today and in subsequent discussions how we make sure that our packers and movers are protected and our people are properly protected. So some of the things we will consider of course is should there be medical screening before they come upon our bases or come to people's homes or apartments. Also they would be bound to follow our policy if it still is in effect with regard to face coverings. So all those things that we want to take into account to again ensure priority number one is met protecting our service members and their families. Yeah and also you know with the access to people's belongings and also the accordion effect that is going to be created because of the delaying moves we also have to prioritize you know so there's going to be certain delays that will want people to be aware that we're going to be dealing with. But in the meantime safety again is going to be paramount. Excellent. Now if COVID-19 significantly threatens our people and readiness shouldn't service members and their families be issued appropriate masks to protect themselves. Is this something that DLA or GSA can fill through the supply channels? And this is an anonymous question. Sure. I'll take the first stab at that. Well we are following CDC guidance and what CDC guidance basically tells us is that the masks should be and this is a combination of DOD guidance as well. Masks should be reserved for medical personnel, for personnel in contact with either infected persons or possibly infected persons. As many of you know at this point in time we've put out guidance that says with regard to our own status off post off duty strongly encouraged that you use a face covering on post required to use a face covering if you cannot abide by the social distancing rules that have been set forth. So at this point in time the provision of face masks by DLA is prioritized based on health care workers, service members who are engaged with health workers or infected persons or on a critical security mission as they need it. Otherwise we continue to urge folks to use face coverings and those can be purchased, those can be made, there are a variety of ways to get them and to ensure you can add a double layer of protection to what you're personally doing. Let me add one comment here on you said the question said significant impact on overall readiness. I just want to remind not only our troops and our families but also our allies partners and our adversaries that the U.S. military is a very very large capable force in all domains in space and cyber and the traditional domains of land, sea and air and our readiness is still very high and no one should doubt the readiness of the U.S. military to respond and defend the American people if required. We've got forces and we've taken appropriate mitigations for for example our nuclear strategic forces they are being medicated against COVID, other types of forces, reaction forces, high-end soft forces, etc. So we're taking all appropriate measures for that and I don't want anyone out there in the world to think that somehow the U.S. military's readiness is significantly degraded, it is not. Of course the headline news is the Teddy Roosevelt and that that has been significant as an individual ship but the Teddy Roosevelt in and of itself has got about 400 positive tested COVID positive test results so far out of a crew of 5,000 and although that is significant for that particular ship we think our assessment both the Paycom commander and joint staff myself etc. is that if required in time of contingency planning the TR would be ready. We can put that right back out to see if needed and there's a lot of other capabilities out there. We are committing as the Secretary said 50,000 troops and medical assets and so on all of that's important but if you look at supplies we were the Secretary committed 10 million masks for example we had a 20 percent overage in our stockage that's where those 10 million masks came from so we are not depleting our readiness to anything that would jeopardize the nation from other types of threats and and I just want to clarify that because that narrative is a bit out there and I want to make sure everyone clearly understands the readiness of the U.S. military is still strong we're still capable and we're still ready no matter what the threat. Thank you and then the next question I would pose to the SEAC will the and this comes from Lieutenant Colonel Christina Hoggett at Peterson Air Force Base will the maximum amount of user lose leave allowed to be carried over because of COVID-19? Yeah and this is something that we're currently working and the three of us here were fully supportive of this initiative we have to go ahead and make sure that our people are taking care of and we realized the hardship spring break to begin with and now depending how long this goes people are going to have some use or lose leave and we want to make sure that our service members out there do not lose that entitlement so Chairman anything else to add on that one? No I think SEAC summed that up very well thank you. Great the next question prior to COVID-19 some medical treatment facilities lacked staffing to handle routine appointments is there any consideration to sending a DOD wide recall now to increase the medical staff's capacity in order to help provide timely care after we are beyond COVID-19 and I'd pose that to the secretary? Sure well first I'd say we were recently given presidential authority to call up the reserves I exercised that authority so we are now reaching deep into our reserves across all the services to find doctors nurses and other medical professionals that we can call up and are calling up or have called up already to deploy to city's hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic so obviously New York City is the epicenter and we've already deployed hundreds of doctors there in fact we have well over 2,000 right now deployed of various components of the armed services at the same time we're also looking to tap into those reserves to backfill into our medical treatment facilities those doctors nurses and other medical professionals who were deployed as part of that response in support of local and state authorities so we will continue to do that the prioritization will be to cities and localities affected followed by filling gaps in our own MTFs I can't guarantee that folks will be called up to deal with routine appointments obviously right now where the prioritization is infected personnel acute patients with some type of acute trauma or disease or the case may be but I can't promise that we will call up additional folks just to handle routine appointments one of the challenges we face as we call up the reserves that is that in many cases they are during their civilian world their lives they are civilian doctors and nurses in in their own local facilities and hospitals so we got to be careful that we don't call people up and take them away from the urgent task of supporting their local community as in their civilian role and particularly if it pertains to the coronavirus pandemic so we're measuring all that taking into careful assessment and we are calling people up as appropriate great the next question I would pose to the SEAC what is DOD's intent as far as treatment and after-service care for service members who can't contracted COVID-19 and this is from JW Reed of the Air Force no thank you just like every other treatment that we provide our service member number one it will be a matter of record number two we'll continue to go ahead and treat as we develop the solutions for COVID-19 we'll be able to treat and upon exit of service expect another screening before you depart again to make it a matter of record but this is no different than any other element that our service members are exposed to thank you and then I would pose this question to the Secretary what is the Department of Defense doing to reassure and support our allies and partners during this pandemic it's a great question and it's it's important that we continue to help our allies and partners and friends as we work our way through this pandemic it's a it's a global crisis and it requires a global response and we try and cooperate and coordinate as much as possible I will tell you that I've been on the phone several times with the number of our my colleagues ministers of defense in other countries whether it's been Ukraine Italy Canada a number of other countries that I've been able to reach out to and I'll give you some anecdotes if I may in terms of how we've helped a system so we provided critical medical equipment and humanitarian cargo in the last couple months to allies such as Romania and Italy we continue through our combatant commanders to provide health and basic education projects to 22 partner nations through our overseas humanitarian aid and desist humanitarian disaster and civic aid program our DoD laboratories are are working hard too to provide biosurveillance in a number of countries defense threat reduction agencies provided a lot of support in laboratory and diagnostic supplies to over 28 partner nations across four continents so we're doing a lot across DoD across the Department of Defense to help our partners and allies and we will do more particularly as our own supply chains get up and running and begin producing medical equipment and PPE we will be available to share that with our with our partners and allies as well great and then the final question the chairman had a chance to allude to this but I pose it to all of you we have another question on readiness do you believe our forces are ready to fight and win in light of COVID-19 I do I mean I think our military as I stated before and and and I wouldn't want any mixed messages going out there to any adversaries I think they can take advantage of an opportunity if you will at a time of crisis that would be a terrible and tragic mistake if they thought that the US military is very very capable to conduct whatever operations are necessary to defend the American people and we are ready today we'll be ready tomorrow and we will adapt ourselves to be able to operate within a COVID-19 environment we're already doing that and then across the entire uniform military we've got about call it little at little less than 2000 so far COVID positive patients it'll probably go up but 2000 out of 2.3 million is not huge and then he had in the 50,000 medical personnel and National Guardsmen etc that are committed to the states and so on so we are dealing with COVID-19 but we are doing so to minimize the impact on operational readiness to be able to respond to any contingency so I'm very confident in the US military's ability to respond if necessary hopefully it won't be necessary but we can and will if necessary. Yes I'm absolutely confident that we are very ready to handle any mission that comes our way and why is that because our commanders and NCOs have taken great care to protect their units to ensure mission readiness we've they've taken a number of measures across the board whether they are deployed overseas or here at home so I'm confident they are taking every possible measure to ensure that readiness exists again as you know my top priorities have been been number one taking care of our people that's critical if you're going to accomplish mission two which is ensuring our national mission readiness and depending on the type of unit you are and where you're located how you do that is very different but as the chairman said too at this point in time we have fewer than 2000 of our service members infected by the virus and most of them are mild to moderate we we have a far far far smaller number of hospitalizations but when you look at that number it's less than 2000 it's much lower in terms of a rate of infection than you see in our civilian counterparts and I I attribute that to the measures we took very early on going all the way back to I think 3 February when we issued our first guidance to the field with regard to health protection and we gave our I gave our commanders our four star commanders our service secretaries our service chiefs I gave them the authority to implement that broad guidance as they saw best fit depending on the types of units they have the locations the people the readiness levels and all that and they've done a they've done a very good job for the most part in terms of protecting our force and ensuring that mission readiness is there and at the same time helping protect our fellow Americans so I'm very proud of what our commanders and senior NCOs have done and I'm even just as proud if not more proud of our service members what they're doing on the front lines here in the United States of America great and that's a strong note to end on but I would just ask if there's any final words as we close out this this town hall I would just say thank you once again to all of our service members and their family members and our civilians out there who are dealing with this crisis just as we are I really respect and have high regard for what you're doing and proud for those who are out serving on the front lines whether it's abroad or here at home these are tough times challenging times unique times I haven't seen this in my lifetime but I know we will get through this we'll get through the stronger than before please stay in touch with us through the chain of command we will continue to do town halls like this every now and then and we want to hear your feedback we want to be able to act on it but keep in mind that we are taking your best interests in mind as we think ahead about everything from PCS moves to schooling to medical issues of any type so we're taking through those problems we look forward to your feedback and keep in mind those three priorities I've talked about protecting our service members civilians and families that means taking care of yourself and one another ensuring you're ready to accomplish your your mission and number three full support to our state local authorities when it comes to the whole nation whole government response we're in tough times ahead as we go through this but I'm confident that there is light at the end of the tunnel and we will come out of this stronger and more resilient than ever before so thank you chairman yeah we just just add very briefly that you know we're resilient country we've gone through very very hard times over the last 240 years we're resilient military many times we have bent but we never break and and that that that will happen this time as well and we will emerge on the other side of this as a stronger nation and a stronger military and we are extraordinarily proud of everything that every soldier sailor airman marine coast guard's been out there is doing to protect our nation and help the people of america through this covid crisis see yeah yes mr secretary so for the entire dod forum they're listening to us today we ask you to continue to be flexible adaptable and versatile in the midst of this pandemic and what we promise you from our end is that we're going to be your sensors your synchronizers and your integrators to find the solutions to this issue but again we'll we'll fight it we'll we'll go ahead and win against it and that time will come soon thank you all once again take care of yourselves and take care of each other have a good day