Pete Hegseth Orders External and Internal After-Action Reviews of U.S. Military's Covid Vaccine Mandate
Internal review to be led by Under Secretary of War Anthony J. Tata, who says the goal is to establish 'permanent' safeguards against future vaccine mandates on the troops.
Last Wednesday, while seeking some answers from the Department of War in my role as senior editor of The MAHA Report about back pay for members of the military who were discharged for not getting the Covid vaccine, I was sent some very interesting information.
The information, sent by the Department of War press office, was in the form of a public statement saying that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has directed an outside organization called the National Academy of Public Administration to go over “lessons learned” from the Pentagon’s Covid vaccine mandate in order to “improve future policy” … and that in addition — and “due to critical and pervasive impacts of the Covid-19 vaccine mandate” — he is ordering that an internal Department of War panel be convened.
This internal panel, the statement says, will be made up of military and civilian employees of the Department of war who will “review the official decisions, coordination, planning and execution of the Covid-19 mandate from January 2020 through January 2023.”
The internal panel will be led by Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata, a retired Brigadier General in the U.S. Army who came back into the Pentagon last year as a Trump appointee and is now one of Hegseth’s top deputies.
Here’s the quote from Tata that was included in the statement:
“The Department is fully committed to restoring honor and rebuilding trust with the warfighters impacted by the Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, we continue to prioritize reinstatement, deliver remedies, and establish permanent safeguards against future mandates.” (emphasis added)
(Here’s the MAHA Report story that I wrote that was published last Friday > The Long Shadow of the U.S. Military’s Covid Vaccine Mandate: Thousands of Troops Are Still Seeking Back Pay After Being Forced Out
Tata is also quoted in the statement as saying that two memos that were attached “reflect our ongoing dedication to transparency and accountability.”
“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.”
This is some of the strongest language from the Department of War that we’ve seen on the topic of the Covid vaccine mandate on our military, and a sign that among the political leaders at the Pentagon, there is a determination to make sure that forcing an experimental vaccine on the troops under threat of a dishonorable discharge is something that should never be allowed to happen again.
Let’s take a moment to give thanks for this very welcome news and to acknowledge that this represents a HUGE change in the attitude of our government toward the Covid vaccine mandate and what it did to the U.S. military.
It is estimated that around 100,000 members of the military were discharged or constructively discharged over their refusal to get the Covid vaccine, or left voluntarily after months of extreme pressure and intimidation over their refusal to get it. This includes about 8,500 active duty troops, 22,500 Reservists on active duty and 69,000 Guardsmen. (Estimate by attorney Dale Saran, former judge advocate in the U.S. Marine Corps who is representing 1,324 plaintiffs in three class action suits against the government over the Covid vaccine mandate.)
Of the approximately 16,000 troops who requested religious exemptions to the Biden-era Covid vaccine mandate, only 339 were granted — 330 of these were for members of the Air Force.
President Trump, after returning to the White House in January of 2025, ordered that members of the military expelled over the Covid vaccine mandate be reinstated and awarded back pay, calling the mandate an “unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary burden on our service members.”
But as of last week only 230 men and women have come back in, with the Pentagon saying another 600 or so have expressed interest in returning.
The U.S. military was fundamentally changed by the Covid vaccine mandate imposed on troops, in other words, and it’s a long way from restoring the force to its prior state after having lost so many of its most courageous — and patriotic — members.
But back to the Pentagon’s release of information last week.
The two memos that were released with the statement include some interesting details.
In one of them, Hegseth orders the Department of War Internal Covid-19 After-Action Review Panel to publish a report on its findings and directs that this report be declassified and released to the public by February of 2027.
In the other memo, he directs all “component heads” of the Department of War and also all principal staff assistants with the Office of the Secretary of War to support the internal review panel and to “fully cooperate with panel members’ requests for official documentation, correspondence, interviews, and briefings, to the extent authorized by current law and policy” and to appoint military and civilian personnel to serve on the panel, to include activating Reservists as needed.
The memo also refers to the external review to be done by the National Academy of Public Administration, saying that this review is “well on track to provide actionable results by the end of the year.”
This is somewhat astonishing news as there has been no reporting on this review anywhere, on any news site.
What do we know about the organization that is doing the external review?
The National Academy of Public Administration is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization chartered by Congress in 1967. It is charged with responding to requests for assistance from Congress and federal agencies.
The structure of the organization is unusual. Rather than having permanent policy staff, it has close to 1,000 “fellows” who are drawn from government agencies, labor organizations, and the corporate world, and who serve on panels and study groups.
A description of the NAPA review of the military’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate is on the organization’s website and is dated December 9, 2025. So it’s apparently been sitting there for seven months without anyone noticing.
The study is entitled: Department of War: Covid After Action Review and is being chaired by David Chu, with three other NAPA fellows listed as contributors: Cary Coglianese, Gene Migliaccio and Brynt Parmeter.
David Chu previously headed the Institute for Defense Analyses and was the Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness under President George W. Bush. In the late 70s and early 80s he was the assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office for National Security and International Affairs. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Yale.
Here’s the overview of the NAPA review:
The National Academy of Public Administration study, according to this, will look at the DOW’s Covid-19 response, “from initial response through vaccine development, mandate implementation, recission, and reinstatement.”
Former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the Covid vaccine mandate on the military in August of 2021. He rescinded it in January of 2023 after Congress included a provision in the defense authorization bill requiring him to do this.
The study, according to the summary above, will also examine exemption and discharge decisions, “focusing on policy consistency, fairness and outcomes” and will assess how all of this impacted military readiness, morale and “deployability.”
The four members of the panel — David Chu, Cary Coglianese, Gene Migliaccio and Brynt Parmeter — will oversee and guide the study, and two Department of War advisors — Kacy J. Dixon and C. Scott “Sonny” Duncan — will help connect the study team to people who were affected by the mandate to provide input throughout the project.
Kacy Dixon is a 16-year veteran of the Air Force who left the military over her refusal to comply with Covid vaccine mandate as she was pregnant at the time and her doctor had advised her not to get it. She appeared on Fox News last year, lauding Hegseth’s attempts to undo the damage to the military from the vaccine mandate. She is now a senior advisor to Tata on Covid Reinstatement.
C. Scott “Sonny” Duncan is the senior advisor to the commandant of the Marine Corps and a decorated combat naval aviator. He opposed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate and, according to his bio on the NAPA site, was “removed from command due to his conviction to honor God and support service members with sincerely held religious beliefs.” The bio also notes that he worked to help pass the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that included a provision requiring that the Covid vaccine mandate on the military be rescinded.
The final report of the study by NAPA, including findings and recommendations, is scheduled to be completed by December of 2026.
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Note: There is no other reporting anywhere in the media about the details of the Department of War’s announcement on these two reviews of the Covid vaccine mandate on members of the U.S. military, including the names of the members of the NAPA study group and what their study will cover. I have turned off monthly subscriptions as I have not been writing regularly, but would welcome support that may be offered so that I can do further reporting on this and other news related to the Covid vaccine and other topics. Thank you for reading.
This is encouraging news. I hope the people in control are friends of the people and not the Military Industrial Complex.
I am also very distrustful of the massive delay in performing this. It could have been actioned as Trump stepped into office and he would have sent a much more significant message. Lots of people have moved on, permanently lost trust and even more people were harmed by the jabs in the interim in the forces and in civilian life due to the slow walking/trickle truthing of the whole issue of mandates and experimental jabs.
Good to learn that Trump/Hegseth are giving this the attention it deserves. Hopefully the NAPA review will result with an acknowledgement and respect for the soldiers' medical and religious freedoms and provide compensation for those negativity affected. I hope that employers in the private sector get a strong wakeup call in this regard as well. Far too many people, my daughter included, were pressured into getting this experimental gene therapy poison.