Monday, April 13, 2020

DOD Learns Lessons for Future From Coronavirus Fight


April 13, 2020 | BY Jim Garamone , DOD News

The Defense Department is "all in" for the fight against COVID-19 and to learn from the experience so the department is better prepared when another pandemic strikes, the Joint Staff's director of joint force development said.

This is part of DOD's planning efforts in the Pentagon and elsewhere, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Daniel O'Donohue said last week in an interview with defense reporters.

Members of the directorate are part of the crisis management team working night and day on the DOD's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the general said. "We're learning as rapidly as we can in the application of this fight, but also any future one," he added.

In addition to the team at the Pentagon, a "shadow" crisis management team is working at the Joint Staff’s facility in Suffolk, Virginia. That team receives the same information and conclusions that the Pentagon team does, and it can step in for the Pentagon team if necessary, the general said. But that team also is looking beyond the current crisis, he said.

"They're there for redundancy, … but they're also the development team," O'Donohue said. They're working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, he told reporters.

The team also is using artificial intelligence, machine learning, visualization tools and more to look for patterns or to give advance notice of possible hotspots, he said.

Both teams are looking for ways to protect the force while allowing the force to do the military missions the American people expect, the general said.

The fight against COVID-19 once again highlights the need for staunch allies and partners, O'Donohue emphasized.

The nature of the pandemic is that it is in different stages in different parts of the world, he noted, and the United States was able to learn from the Italian military. Now, he said, other nations are able to learn from the United States.

"We're learning from them, as militaries go through the same crisis," he said. "This crisis, as tragic as it so profoundly is, is exercising us in ways that are relevant, to include cross-learning across allies and partners."

The crisis also stresses the U.S. government as a whole in ways that training exercises cannot, he said. DOD and other federal agencies have long planned what to do in the event of a pandemic, he explained, but it is different when it's the real thing.

"The management of relationships, the coordination and complex activity, the whole-of-government approach, decision and information tools, all will be things we need in any fight," the general said. "The focus is relevance now, and how do we learn and get better and exercise those things in the future that have relevance that endures beyond this crisis."

O'Donohue said the U.S. military is in a good place for readiness, even with the pandemic forcing cancellation of some exercises. "We came off a really good year in terms of exercises, so we have a good basis and readiness level coming into the crisis," he said.

The United States also is at a higher readiness level than Russia and China, the nation's great-power competitors, O'Donohue said. "We have a favorable position and relative advantage," he added. "One of our competitive advantages against any threat is the quality of the force we have, and educating them with the complexity of the environment that they're in.

"Education is a key component of our strategic competitive advantage," he continued. "Expediency [in response to COVID] got us out of the classroom. I think many of the things we've learned will be retained and take us where we need to go for the future fight."

DoD Contract for 60 N95 Critical Care Decontamination Units: $415M Contract, Each Unit Can Decontaminate 80K N95 Masks Per Day


April 13, 2020

Statement attributed to Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, Department of Defense spokesman:

"The Department of Defense's Defense Logistics Agency, on behalf of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), has awarded a $415 million contract for 60 Battelle Memorial Institute Critical Care Decontamination Systems (CCDS), that can decontaminate up to 80,000 used N95 respirators per system per day, enabling mask reuse up to 20 times.

Spearheaded by the Department's Joint Acquisition Task Force, six units have already been delivered to locations including two to New York, and one each to Columbus, Ohio, Boston, Chicago and Tacoma, providing the ability to sterilize 3.4 million masks a week, reducing the need for new masks by the same number.

All 60 systems will be available by early May for prioritization and distribution by FEMA and HHS. Once all are delivered, these 60 units will allow 4.8 million masks to be sterilized per day, almost 34 million per week.

'I remain extremely proud of the selfless efforts of Department of Defense personnel who continue to do everything they can to help provide medical masks, test kits, medicine and meals to support America's military, medical, emergency services and law enforcement professionals who are on the front lines and need them most,' said Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord.

This procurement includes a service contract to cover operations and maintenance."

DOD Working to Eliminate Foreign Coronavirus Disinformation


April 13, 2020 | BY Jim Garamone , DOD News

Under the rubric of "not wasting a good crisis," Russia, China and others are using the coronavirus pandemic to spread disinformation to further their goals, Pentagon officials said.

The Defense Department is working with the State Department, allies, partners and other agencies to curb this trend, Pentagon officials said in a telephone briefing for reporters last week.

"We've seen increasing unity of effort in response to COVID, both within Western democracies, but also across allies and partners, to include terrific sharing of medical lessons learned," said Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.

Cooper specifically pointed out instances where the Russian government sought to sow disinformation in the West.

"I think the most pernicious disinformation that we have to contend with is the disinformation that is sowing global … mistrust and confusion," she said. "These are messages that are endangering global health because they're undermining the efforts of governments, of health agencies and of organizations that are in charge of disseminating accurate information about the virus to the public."

An example of this disinformation came to light in March, when Russia Today and Sputnik broadcast that hand-washing was ineffective against coronavirus. Another "alternative news source" in Russia reported that there was no pandemic and that the deaths in Italy were the common flu, she said.

In early January, Russian news outlets broadcast that they had discovered a cure: They hadn't. Further, they stated that it was really U.S. pharmaceutical companies that were spreading rumors about the virus to drum up business. It wasn't, Cooper said.

"You can see how they could cause individual citizens to act in ways that contradict good advice that they are being given by public health officials," Cooper said.

While Russia may be the most egregious culprit, China is also involved in the disinformation process, Chad Sbragia, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, told reporters. "In terms of specific disinformation campaigns, the one … that [I] was most concerned  with … was the false accusation that COVID-19 began with a U.S. Army service member bringing that to China somehow," he said. "That was just patently false and, frankly, unhelpful. It's those kind of activities that we see that are just not what the global environment community needs at this time."

Given that the virus first appeared in China and that Chinese medical professionals had first-hand experience in how to combat COVID, the United States was disappointed with the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda and disinformation campaign effort to shift responsibility of the pandemic to others — "which was unfounded, futile and really counterproductive," Sbargia said.

Iran has been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic, and the Iranian government has also spread disinformation, saying the United States was responsible for the virus.

"We're seeing a variety of actors around the world who are using COVID-19 to target or blame Western allies, or the United States in particular," Cooper said. "And I really think … of it as a global disinformation ecosystem where a news item that generates in one part of the world then gets amplified and picked up elsewhere."

U.S. officials have been exposing this disinformation, Cooper said. "We're calling on all countries — Russia included — to rein in malign actors that are spreading misleading, disruptive information about the virus," he added.