The Department of Defense plans to convene a panel to study its mid-2021 decision to require the COVID-19 vaccine for all service members and the circumstances that led to the dismissal of more than 8,400 troops who refused the shots.
The Pentagon announced Wednesday that Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata will draw from military personnel and civilian employees to create the panel, which is tasked with reviewing “the official decisions, coordination, planning, and execution of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from January 2020 through January 2023.”
In a statement, Tata said the effort will 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 addition to Tata’s announcement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged to declassify and release materials related to the mandate, which he said were “essential to learn the lessons of this national security event to ensure we do not make the mistakes of the past.”
The National Academy of Public Administration, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that studies management and organization, is responsible for conducting the after-action review.
According to NAPA, its report is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Hegseth said he would publish the organization’s findings by February 2027.
The COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, spreading globally across the world in a manner of months, infecting more than 779 million people in the years since and killing 7.1 million worldwide.
In the U.S., 103 million individuals have been infected and 1.2 million have died. Within the Department of Defense, 704,000 contracted COVID from March 2020 until December 2022, when the DoD stopped posting updated numbers.
Nearly 700 DoD-affiliated people, including 96 service members, 36 dependents, 417 civilian employees and 141 contractors, died.
To stop the spread of the evolving virus, the first Trump administration worked with private industry to develop a vaccine for the illness. The effort, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, fielded a vaccine within seven months, and over the course of the following year, 2 million U.S. service members were vaccinated.
But some personnel refused to get the vaccine, citing personal or religions reasons. Some felt that since they already contracted the virus, they didn’t need the vaccine, while others took issue with the relatively new technology behind the vaccines. The vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer both use messenger RNA to instruct the body to produce a piece of the virus protein to provoke an immune response.
Still others said they objected to the vaccines because they were created using cell lines developed from fetal tissue obtained in the 1970s and 1980s, although the vaccines themselves contain no aborted fetal tissue.
More than 53,000 filed for exemptions and at least 8,400 were discharged.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that allowed service members who refused the mandate to rejoin the military. From early 2023 through June 2025, 126 service members who had refused to receive the shot had returned to service.
At least 56 members of the U.S. Coast Guard who left service as a result of the mandate have returned to duty, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Although the Trump administration was at the forefront of developing a vaccine to stop the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the second Trump administration has taken steps to alter the long-accepted vaccine schedules for children and adults.
The Department of Health and Human Services has crafted a new vaccine recommendation for children that removes flu and COVID vaccines from the regular schedule as well as rotavirus, meningitis and hepatitis A and B.
In April, Hegseth canceled the Defense Department’s mandatory flu vaccine program for service members, saying it was “just overly broad and not rational.”
The military services began drafting requests for exceptions to the liberal policy, with Tata telling members of Congress in May that the services wanted the requirement to remain in place for personnel in close quarters, including basic training, ships, submarines and training schools.
In June, influenza swept through Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, infecting 285 airmen and hospitalizing six. One recruit, Keon McDaniel, died. The Air Force has not publicly stated his cause of death.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and seven other Democrat lawmakers wrote Hegseth Tuesday demanding answers regarding McDaniel’s death.
Castro said earlier this month the Air Force told him McDaniel’s death was a result of the outbreak.
“Politicizing the administration of lifesaving vaccines has led to the death of a service member, the hospitalization of numerous trainees, and an expensive race to retroactively provide our service members the health care they need and deserve,” the group wrote.
The Defense Department did not respond by publication regarding questions on the cost of convening a panel to review the mandate.
Patricia Kime is a senior writer covering military and veterans health care, medicine and personnel issues.
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