Defense Secretary Mark Esper said readiness and training have suffered amid the coronavirus outbreak and that the military will be following White House coronavirus task force leader Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice in making decisions on how best to protect the force.
“We’ve spoken to, for example, folks like Dr. Fauci and are adapting his principles and his guidelines to the force and giving commanders the freedom to do that to maximize training in the safest possible way,” Esper said at a Brookings Institution discussion Monday.
The Pentagon has been criticized for the nearly 5,000 service members who have already been infected. Though Esper stressed that was a small percentage of the 2 million-person force, more infections are still possible.
“We are anticipating what could be a greater impact if we don’t see a change in trajectory of the virus or how we adapt ourselves,” he said.
Esper added that the fewer than 100 service members who have been hospitalized and the two deaths so far, a sailor from the USS Theodore Roosevelt and a National Guard member from New Jersey, though tragic, were “fairly good” when compared to how the virus has affected the civilian population.
The defense secretary characterized the impact on readiness to be “low,” but adjustments are being made to prevent long-term effects.
“There will be a new normal that we will have to adapt to [for] an extended period of time … at least until we have a vaccine that we are confident in,” he said. “What do we do over the next six, 12, 18 months?”
Esper said each service has been given the latitude to adjust training in the way it sees fit. That meant a one- to two-week “pause” for the training of Army and Navy recruits while boot camps adjusted to new social distancing practices and increased testing capacity.
The Marine Corps temporarily halted new recruit transfers to its Parris Island boot camp after an outbreak, and the Army has reduced the flow of its new recruits to allow for more distancing and isolation periods.
Training and joint exercises with allies have also been canceled, including the large-scale Defender 2020 exercise across Europe.
“Over time, it may have a cumulative impact,” Esper said, noting that smaller exercises are moving forward and that the Army is changing the way it does large exercises to break troops down into smaller groups.
“The sooner we can adapt our practices, the sooner we can learn from this virus and make changes, the better we will be — and the more likely we are to maintain a high degree of readiness for the force,” he said.
Also of concern to the military has been a high rate of asymptomatic transmission, as has occurred on the sidelined Pacific carrier Roosevelt, where 1,000 sailors tested positive.
“We are experiencing very high rates in the military with regard to asymptomatic transmission,” Esper admitted.
The defense secretary said that as testing capacity ramps up, the Department of Defense will prioritize a tiered system outlined last week.
Tier “zero” comprises those exhibiting systems and military medical personnel. Tier I includes strategic and nuclear triad forces. Tier II is composed of forward-deployed forces. Tier III comprises those who are about to deploy, and Tier IV includes everyone else.
“That last tier will be the bulk of your forces. … Unless they are displaying symptoms, we won’t test them,” Esper said.
