April 22nd 2020

By Anonymous

Its very sad to say that our military has dropped the ball when it comes to the COVID-19 response, yet this is what is happening.  As someone with lots of military connections, I’m growing concerned. I find the more I inquire among the US military, the more worried I become by their poor performance and lack of planning.  In the first week of April, an Army officer friend from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, called me up to warn me, “stay away from Fort Carson!“  Since I live in Colorado, I was curious as to why he would say this. 

He then told me that Fort Carson, Colorado, along with Fort Campbell, Kentucky, were experiencing some of the most dangerous spikes in COVID-19 cases.  He explained the dangerous spikes were from among the civilian work force, not from the uniformed active duty soldiers. Apparently, the civilian workforce at Fort Carson was spreading the COVID-19 virus across departments on the military installation. Often both spouses are employed as civilian workers on the installation but in different departments.  Once one spouse was infected, both soon spread it to their respective departments. Although, the number of COVID-19 patients was not given, the warning was chilling.

He provided addition information such as, while the virus spread among the Army’s work force, panicked staff officers at Fort Bragg and Washington began to take the unclassified health data and hide it from the civilian medical community.  The army staff allegedly now puts their unclassified COVID-19 data on the classified SIPRnet computer network away from the rest of the medical community.  I was told, this was less a conspiracy, and more bureaucratic panic.   Yet this classification of unclassified COVID-19 data gravely concerned the officer.

Other causes of concern from this Army officer was the fact that the Army was in the first week of April, still holding staff meetings in crowed conference rooms.  Not adequately practicing social distancing. Or that nobody was wearing masks because the chain of command could not get masks that match the Army uniforms so they didn’t allow them anyone to wear a mask period. 

In a different discussion with another friend, an official at US Northern Command, the leading military command for homeland security, the discussion was just as disheartening.  During mid-March, the command was only just beginning to discuss how the command would deal with COVID-19.  They didn’t yet have a plan for working their regular mission considering the pandemic.  Mind you, this is the military command created to provide support to civil authorities during just such a crisis.  During President Obama’s time in office, US Northern Command regularly rehearsed military support to a pandemic crisis and exercised the command and control for pandemic response.

As one with extremely close ties to the military my goal is not to tarnish the military, but to improve it.  As anyone familiar with the Army’s After- Action Review (AAR) process knows, one must be able to withstand constructive criticism.  Learn from mistakes and doing it better next time is part of the AAR process. Our military and the Army need to do better. This is but a small sampling of the military response, yet I feel it is the tip of the iceberg. We are only in the first wave of this pandemic, there will be other waves.   As we move further along in this crisis, the Army and the rest of the military must pick up its game.