Pentagon panel to study 2021 COVID vaccine mandate

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The Pentagon on Wednesday announced it will convene a panel to study the “decisions, coordination, planning, and execution” of the military’s 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a rule that led to the dismissal or departure of more than 8,700 service members.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the nonpartisan and independent National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to conduct an after-action review “capturing lessons learned to improve future policy,” according to a Defense Department statement.

To supplement NAPA, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata will gather an internal panel of DOD military and civilian employees to review the decisions around the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from January 2020 through January 2023, when the requirement for all service members was rescinded.

Tata said the effort is meant to rebuild trust with the warfighters impacted by the mandate and help “establish permanent safeguards against future mandates.”

“By having members of the affected community lead the internal after-action review and further analyze how the COVID-19 vaccine mandate influenced decision-making and readiness—and making the findings public—we will ensure that the Department learns from the past and does not repeat these mistakes in the future,” Tata said in a statement.

NAPA expects its report to be completed by the end of the year, and the document approved for release to the public by February 2027, according to Hegseth.

The COVID-19 virus has killed more than 7.1 million people — including 1.2 million in the U.S. alone — since early 2020, when it began spreading across the globe.

The illness was seen as a threat to U.S. military readiness, with 704,000 DOD-affiliated individuals — including service members, their dependents, civilian personnel and contractors — contracting the virus. Nearly 700 individuals died, according to numbers from December 2022, when the Pentagon ended its practice of posting such findings.

Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in August 2021 ordered the Covid-19 vaccine for all troops, sailors and airmen beginning with active-duty and eventually including the National Guard and Reserve.

More than 8,700 service members were separated from the military for refusing to comply with the mandate before it was rescinded, citing personal or religions reasons. Since the start of his second term, President Trump has hoped to bring back those who were ousted. In a January executive order he called for making reinstatement available to such military members.

Then in April the Pentagon sent “letters of apology” to the booted troops, asking them to return to the military, though a large majority have declined.

Trump has called the mandate “unfair, overbroad, and [a] completely unnecessary burden on our service members.”

Hegseth has framed the Pentagon’s vaccine requirement as illegal and “one of the most atrocious attacks on our military by the previous administration.”

The Pentagon chief also in April canceled the U.S. military’s mandatory flu vaccine program, which had been in place since 1945, calling it an “absurd” and “overreaching” mandate that he claimed weakened the country’s warfighting capabilities.

But that quickly led to a major flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio in June, with nearly 300 service members sickened, six hospitalized, and one killed from influenza, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas).

The outbreak at Lackland prompted the Army, Navy and Air Force to once again require flu shots for basic trainees.

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Anthony Tata

Joaquin Castro

Lloyd Austin

Pete Hegseth

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