Without further ado, general. General good morning. Thank you all for being here today. I have a statement and ill take questions. The command is releasing the results of the Doctors Without Borders in afghanistan which 2015. Ed on october 3, ill say it again, our deepest families of o the those injured and killed. You know, general john campbell, then the u. S. Forces afghanistan commander directed the investigation into this incident and appointed u. S. Army Major GeneralWilliam Hickman as the lead investigator, along with two investigating officers, u. S. Army brigadier shawn air force u. S. Brigadier robert armfeel. These general officers were years d because of their of professional experience and nderstanding of the complex operational environment in afghanistan. They were also selected because side of from that afghanistan and could bring an objective independent perspective to the investigation. These officers, and a supporting taff of more than a dozen associated subject matter experts, visited the doctors inhout borders Trauma Center afghanistan and various other. Ey locations this was a thorough investigation done with painstaking attention to detail ollowedbian indepth review process. The process of the investigation an active pursuit looking for factors associated with the incident. General his review, campbell proved the investigation on november 21, 2015. Subsequently, were able to begin more ocess of redacting than 1,000 pages making up the report and its exhibits to ensure no classified or otherwise objective information was release while being transparent as part of the investigation. In line with this commitment, following todays briefing, u. S. Central command will post the redacted Investigation Report to s freedom of nd information act reading room web site issue which is access able to the public. Before i get to your questions, ill briefly provide an overview of the Investigation Findings and outline the actions that have been taken to reduce the tragedy from lar occurring again in the future. Importantly, the investigation concluded that the personnel involved did not know they were striking a medical facility. The intended target was an insurgent controlled site which was approximately 400 meters from the Doctors Without BordersTrauma Center. The investigation found an ac 130 gunship air crew in support of a u. S. Special forces element afghan supporting an partner ground force isidentified and struck the Doctors Without BordersTrauma Center. The investigation determined that all members of both the ac 130 air e and the crew were unaware that the aircraft was firing on a medical facility throughout the engagement. The investigation ultimately concluded that this tragic incident was caused by a combination of human errors compounded by process and failures. Understanding the context in which our forces were operating important. Ng is leading up to this incident, u. S. Special Operations ForcesAfghan Special operations partners had been engaged in intense fighting for days and nsecutive nights in kunduz and had repelled heavy and sustained enemy attacks. The ground force was fatigued fighting, still engaged with the aggressive enemy and running low on supplies. In response, the ac 130 aircraft base ew launched from its 69 minutes earlier than originally planned. As a result, the crew did not prepatory information they would normally a mission ed before to include identification of no strike areas. Their ability to receive this information while in flight was lost when one of their satellite radios failed. Shortly after arriving on scene, the aircraft was fired on by a surface to air missile and subsequently moved several miles away from the city center. Distance, the air crew received the grid cordinance of talibancontrolled building. When the air crew planned to plot the coordinates of the building, the system directed which was open field not the location. The air crew attempted to find the target in a nearby area. Instead, they found the Doctors Without BordersTrauma Center, that generally matched the physical description of the he radio. Relayd over t it was initially believed the taliban nter was the control building that was about a quarter mile away. The investigation found that the engagement that followed the Ground Force Commander and the believed istakenly that the air crew and air craft was firing on the intended target. Want to emphasize that the Trauma Center was a protected facility and was on a nostrike list. Receive fire not from the Trauma Center during the incident, nor did the investigation find that insurgents were using it as a base for operations. Treated at nts were the Trauma Center, but hospitals and patients are protected on the battle field. A Trauma Center was protected facility, but it was misidentified during this engagement. The investigations concluded that certain personnel failed to f mply with the rules o engagement and the law of armed conflict. However, the investigation did not conclude that these failures amounted to a war crime. He label war crimes is typically reserved for intentionally s, targeting civilians, objects or locations. Again, the investigation found the incident resulted from a unintentional human errors, process errors, and none ent failures of the personnel knew they were striking a hospital. The investigation identified 16 u. S. Service members whose conduct warranted consideration for appropriate administrative or disciplinary action, including a general officer. General campbell took the action he deemed appropriate regarding 12 of the 16 personnel involved in this tragic incident who were including the general officer. The actions included suspension command, al from letters of reprimand, formal counseling, and extensive retraining. General campbell also forwarded me at u. S. Ation to special Operations Command, here i was serving as the commander at the time. To consider action regarding the return sonnel who would to the united states. I subsequently took action with respect to four of these five letters of issuing reprimand and admonishment and directions that the flight crew be referred to a u. S. Air force flight Evaluation Board to for s their suitability future flight duties. I referred the fifth Service Lieutenant general ken toval , the general commander of the u. S. Special Operations Command who issued a written reprimand. It is important to point out that these adverse administrative actions can carry repercussions on the careers and professional qualifications of these ndividuals that could include denial of promotion, or dvancement, and possible separation from the service. N light of the reports conclusion that the errors committed were unintentional, and after considering other such as the ctors, intense combat situation and equipment failures that affected from a senior commanders perspective, the measures taken against these individuals were appropriate to address the errors they made. Let me add that we are not ublicly releasing the names of these Service Members to protect the privacy of the individuals, and because some of them remain assigned to oversee sensitive or routinely deployable units. In addition to these personal accountability actions, general campbell also ordered u. S. Mental training for forces afghanistan on the applicable authoritys engagement, ules of and the commanders tactical guidance, all which were esigned to minimize the risk that a tragedy like this would occur. His training was delivered to over 9,000 personnel and completed in november 2015. D a comprehensive review of the targeting process ed an order reinforcing the application of the no strike list. Aircraft systems are now preloaded with key information, including the no strike list minimize the reliance on post launch communications. General campbell also issued a revised tactical directive in targeting standard operating to address this situation. U. S. Forces afghanistan also provided the leadership of octors without borders with a means to facilitate direct contact with our command centers. Today, secretary of defense release ill reulose memo directing all to take a ors of actions. We must learn from this tragedy reduce the ps to risk of similar incidents in the future. Before i conclude, id like to it a ght that we had made priority to engage with doctors ithout borders in the Afghan Government and keep them updated and offer our support where we can. Senior u. S. Government and Central Command representatives, including me, have spoken with Doctors Without Borders officials, including the organizations executive director, over two dozen times, to express our condolences, explain how this tragic incident occurred, and outline our future steps. Additionally, u. S. Forces afghanistan leaders have offered their sympathies and provided condolence payments to more than families duals and affected by this tragedy. These modest payments are not esigned to compensate the victims or place a value on their lives but are a gesture of ent of y, and the departm defense has approved 5. 7 a lion in funds to construct comparable structure in kunduz hat is suitable for use as a medical facility. In conclusion, we are deeply saddened that this tragedy again, offer our sincerely condolences to all of those who were affected. Committed to learning from the mistakes that were made and well work hard and train nd put systems in place that reduce the risk of such an accident occurring against in the future. ll be happy to take your questions now. On the matter of the numberity, given of mistakes and consequences, despite they were unintentional, can you explain in your own tods why this did not amount negligence, warranting more severe punishment, and can you explain why this is not a war crime . General votel right. So let me take the last part of your question firshere, and as i mentioned in my remarks here, interpretation here, the legal interpretation, and our understanding of this, the fact an this was unintentional, unintentional action, takes it out of the realm of actually being a deliberate war crime against persons or protected locations. Reason is the principle why we do not consider this to be a war crime. Earlier part of your question, i personally expended great amount of effort and the cases djudicating that were provided to me. I had an opportunity to review the investigation in great detail. I consulted with my legal advisors. With my chain of command in both the army and the air force side and i personally met with the four officers that what dicated against, and i concluded after that was that this was an extraordinarily intense combat situation. He force commander as i mentioned in my remarks, and his force had been engaged for about combat and intense really up until the time of this particular strike had been actually fighting at the location where they were. So this was an extraordinarily intense situation. They were doing a variety of actions at the same time. They were trying to support their Afghan Partners. They were trying to execute resupply operations, and they were trying to defend themselves. So the picture im painting is a very intense situation on the ground. The air crew as i mentioned kunduz shortly after arriving engaged a missile. That was a very significant thing can doesnt happen that often in afghanistan. They took the appropriate measures, got off station, and it just so happens that the this location were passed. While they were offset, due to a technical aspect of the system, a location that was obviously not the right one and they went through the process of communicating between their best nd to do to identify where the location was. They ultimately arrived at the wrong location. That, in my evaluation of and as i talk to each of the individuals that were involved, true. Intention was they were absolutely trying to do the right thing. They were trying to support our Afghan Partners. There was no intention on any of their parts to take a short cut to violate any rules that laid out for them, and they were attempting to do the right thing. Wrongunately, they made a judgment in this particular case targeting this Doctors Without Borders facility. Written general, the statement here talks about the fifth service men, who was referred to you, you referred hat case to the commander of the Army Special Operations committee, and he was directed to he was recertified. Does that mean he was this i believe is o described in here as the ground commander, was he kicked out of the special forces . No. Ral votel and let me just correct just this, that theate fifth member that i referred to, toval, was an enlisted ember, he was a ninth commission officer. He had all of the right tools to adjudicate m this. Y interest as the socomcommander at the time was specifically to address the actions of the officers in this, including the Ground Force Commander and the three officers who were in the aircraft. Audience hi, general, courtney with nbc. Just a couple of quick clarifications. The flight Evaluation Board for the air crew, what did that determine . Are they still flying . General votel to my knowledge, up until the time i had left ocom here a little over four weeks ago, they had not flown. My understanding is the flight Evaluation Board is in progress and should be completed. I am not aware that is an air force process so i am not aware of what they concluded from that. Audience so their boards are not complete. General votel its in the completed. Eing audience can you say how much the condolence payments were worth . Eneral votel the condolence payments that were made were 3,000 for wounded and 6,000 for those who were killed. Audience and finally, you mentioned that the ground commander in the war, he had been fight nothing that same location for several days. I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that he was actively engaged in combat in afghanistan when theyre not supposed to be engaged in combat. Can you explain that a little bit . General votel absolutely. This special forces element actually wasnt permanently positioned in kunduz. It was actually in another location in afghanistan. The situation in kunduz as a result of the place attack that took there, really presented a . A significant security threat. Link up structed to with an Afghan Partner force on the ground, and so he did that. An advisey clearly in and assist role there but of do se, they are having to that from locations that brought he and his team and the afghans they were supporting under direct fire. And so they were very much in an situation here. Udience the report in the predecessor by john campbell, a number of critical problems with the ac 130 Communication System you alluded to, some sort of technical problem that resulted in bad targeting after a maneuver. Ing an undertak evaluation or audit of the ystem of the ac 130 to see how systemic this is, or that eyes sight before a ac 130 strike . General votel we always look at processes, and were in a constant effort to look at he things were doing and ensuring they match the situations were operating and are applicable to it. Aircraft, ct to the air force special Operations Command, of course, has looked detail at that particular problem. In my estimation, this was not a systemic problem. This was a failure at that point specific radio system and antenna that is designed to and transmit data to the ground. So i am unaware that this is a systemic problem. It was a problem that night obviously that contributed to here. Issue right with regard to the other part of techs, the n on j processors that we use, of fact , do account for the of whether we can see the target that we see or we cannot. I remain confident in our procedures to do it either of those ways. So i do not foresee us changing those g with respect to particular techniques and procedures that we use. I think the key point that i here is hlight to you that the procedures are good. What does need to what we do need what we did learn from this is the significant mportance of Clear Communication between the ground and the air, and that is a specific area that i in my revious role as the socomm commander have focused my commanding and one we will on. Inue to focus audience did the aircraft crew actually have a physical feed of the hospital and see that this was no fire coming from the hospital. General votel yes, but thats not unusual, frankly. Looked atvidual whos a lot of censors and a lot of other things here, you dont from a ee fire coming building. So that in and of itself, the fact that they dont see fire coming from a building, which is very difficult to see in my estimation, is not particularly unusual. Audience if you sit back for a minute and look at the strain forces were under after four days of combat and, you know, theres a very limited in ican footprint afghanistan compared to at other times and theres plans right now to draw that down further. Would this speak to the strain on the forces in afghanistan tasks that riety of theyve been asked to carry out nd what do you think about essentially reducing that further . General votel well, i wont any of these discussions that are ongoing in levels what our force will be Going Forward here, but i would add that the capabilities that we have on the ground now that allow us to pursue our Counter Terrorism allow us to d continue to work with our afghan assist, i o advise think are appropriate to what we have. You, i would highlight to was an extreme situation, and i cant sit here and tell you we of those in the uture, but this was an extreme situation that we were dealing with, in an area where we did ot have a normal presence of american soft forces. Audience i actually wanted to ollow up on that very point, while iraq isnt a direct omparison, youve had an incident like this in the battle in the south where the team was wounded,out overnight, because you were unable to get to them. I guess the question is now youve had two instances where your teams are in the field, in running short of supplies. Is this still a risk . Are you satisfied with the risk right now, or now that youve had two incidents, does it raise concerns for you and some adjustment in your mind, and i have a quick followup, sir. General votel well, first off, i remain extraordinarily competent in our forces and our to make right decisions on the ground and factors associated with the missions we are undertaking in support of the make proper risk topic and so this is a that we talk about incessantly in our training, in our deploy people about how we make these kinds of decisions, how we assess risk can do that. Certainly fact that we dont have as many we le on the ground now as did several years ago does affect how we do things. What it requires is us being deliberate, be more thoughtful in how we ever applying our forces and how we with that. G risk i remain estimation, very, very confident in our leaderships that. Y to do audience the president had said he could no longer tolerate being centers of forces for isis. Mozul orces entering before ramadan. If you could meet the president s objective of not tolerating them, if you could back out of isis hands, whats your assessment on what that would do to isis . General votel i think my assessment is it would be devastating to isis, it would ey e away one of their k pillars and that is their ability to control terrain. It ultimately gives them the ability to govern and control populations. Pointed secretary has out repeatedly, and others have roka and mozul remain extraordinarily objective proposals we will focus on and other areas we will have to work on as well. But those two remain extraordinarily important to us. Audience i want to go back to the equipment question. The American Public spends 100 billion a year on procurement, work. Ting the equipment to in your press release, you kind of lumped it all together, process of human error and failure. T if the radio system had worked properly, would the tragedy have been averted in your view . General votel well, possibly. Me the equipment failure that lets talk about here. Ent failures the first equipment failure we talked about was the radio system, the antenna system, that prevented them from receiving Digital Information that would nostrike them of areas and other things and would have been able to allow them to ground. Picture to the thats an important aspect right there, and that may have contributed to it. But i would also just remind you that as the aircraft got up on engaged by a s surface to air missile. And so they followed the proper procedures, got off station, and then were given the grids. Again,y wont get involved in the technical aspects of this, but the angle they were trying to acquire that, caused the system to come up with a wrong location. So i wouldnt point you to any specific thing that if we had not done this, would have prevented this. Of the combination of all these things in an intense ombat situation, i think contributed to this very unfortunate accident. Not have a hey did chronic read time between failure problem over the years that hadnt been fixed. This was an acute one time only from what you saw . General votel im not aware of he mean time for this particular failure of this system. To me, its not a systemic these we have seen on aircraft over a long period of time. Audience to be clear, i understand the authority under which the strike was conducted. As its been described to us at the pentagon, that u. S. Authorities in afghanistan are to the air strikes to be conducted to protect u. S. Forces go after und, to remnants of alqaida and in ases where Afghan Forces are extremists. Which of those criteria applied in this case and can you explain why . General votel the com force commander made the decision to trike under self Defense Authority because he considered himself and by extension the that were in his proximity, and that he was his rting, as part of force. Self chose to apply defense authorities to orchestrate this strike. Audience to follow up, in that scenario, weve seen it several times in afghanistan, it almost ppears commanders in afghanistan are getting around t by simply imbedding u. S. Forces with them and authorizing the strike under the self Defense Authority rather than the which to get around these restriction against just helping combat operations as they were trying to repel the attack. Is there a way to get around this restriction . I dont think no, so and i would not have reached that conclusion and would not reach this conclusion at this point. I think the commanders attempted to apply the rules of engagement and the Authority Given to them in exactly the right way theyre intended but unfortunately we like this tuations that are confusing. There is a lot on the ground. Situation, moving and we have young people, Young Leaders out there that are the right ake decision in the heat of combat comes up wrong, but i dont and i would not frankly, our commanders trying to use go arounds to apply fires in ways other than theyre intended. Votel, i haveneral two questions. One, the mss doctors say they called to military headquarters to say they were under attack within minutes of it started and the attack continued for 60 to 90 minutesulary. Minutes later. Can you explain how that it as a result of the Radio Communications being down . Request didnt they get the message. And can i get your comments on the green beret being reinstated taliban commander who had raped an afghan boy. Can you assure us his future promotions will not be affected . General votel let me take the first. Part here i am not familiar with that so i wont comment on that, and those would normally be a Service Responsibility and not a u. S. Responsibility. To your first part of your question, what the investigation reveals is the strike effects lasted for 30 minutes. What the investigation established was about 10 minutes the Doctors Without Borders contacted one of our that d centers and passed information to us. That went through a series of layers to get to the people on the ground. Frankli, the Ground Force Commander was not tracking a when that ility so information first got to him, that didnt immediately register took a few moments to figure that out, that they actually were firing at it. I would add as soon as they made the determination, they stopped firing. Audience thats different from the original investigation, which said that the attack was completed by the time realized plane that what they were shooting at. General votel what the investigation characterizes is that when they were notified, they stopped firing. Audience when you talk about a string of errors here, technical human errors, i just want you to walk us through, when you look at this report. Youre a very experienced officer. Is there something in particular with the human errors that jumps out at you . S it the fact that these guys had a visual on a target that they thought looked like the intended target . Is it the doctors frantically trying to call u. S. Military stop als to get them to shooting, you know, 18 minutes. When you read this report with experience, there one thing that jumps out at you and you this yourself, how could possibly have happened . General votel i think the one thing as i went through this that jumped out at me was the communication between the air it was ground, and relatively concise, brief communication back and forth, and in a i think in a very confusing situation like this, what i think it merited was more discussion between what was going on. There was not complete Situational Awareness on the ground with what the and there s seeing, was not complete Situational Awareness from the aircraft of what was happening with the ground force. And so to me, that is about communication, and i think and again, i think elements oth of these were exactly trying to do the right thing. They were trying to get to the the answer here and do exact right thing in accordance with authorities they had and unfortunately they came up short and i think communications attributed to that. Ing atce they were shoot in this hospital for quite some time, a half hour. Were they using all the guns . Were they using the 105 . Were they using everything . General votel to my knowledge, i think they used all the systems available on the aircraft. Audience clearly, when theyre looking at this building, theres no indication of enemy fire or any indication of fighting around there. Are you concerned they were target but theres no indication of any possible intent . General votel this is an area we examined in some great detail as we went through this. Frankly its not uncommon to not see fire coming from a building a censor ion through system and that is my own personal experience. Analysts, trained perhaps who have looked at a lot of this over a lot of time and may be able to do that, but its not uncommon to to identify that to not be able to identify that. The other aspect that we looked at was what was the around this fe particular facility, and i think one of the contributing factors here was what was being described by the Ground Force Commander happening at the tarriget was very closely being replicated with the Doctors Without Borders. They found about the same number of people, about the same general locations outside of the building, and so audience were they shooting . Nobody was shooting at the hospital, correct . General votel nobody from the africans, right. Right. A different location. Audience wouldnt they Say Something is wrong here . General votel again, there is a mistaken identification of the target. So the aircraft is looking at one location. The ground force is thinking theyre looking at another location. Theres no way to visually forth that back and between them, and their iscussions, as you look at the transcripts, dont add clarity to that. Audience again, i dont want looking r this, but in at what they saw, there was no one shooting. There was no one going around and no fire fight on the ground. Why would they just keep hitting it . General votel well, again, that is you know, again, in the experience of these individuals right here, who have done these types of operations before, what they were seeing was frankly in line with what was being described from the ground and own experience. I mean, the enemy does adapt to how we operate. So they dont operate in quite an open fashion where we can always see everything that we have. Hat is a known factor that is mixed into this. Time for two more. Thomas. Audience i want to walk through a couple of issues that i have starting with the equipment failure, the satellite radar. Video stand that was a down link that would have gone to the j tech, correct . General votel thats right. Audience second, moving on, surface air missile is kind of a loose term. Am i to understand thats some kind of air pad. Thats our l assessment. Audience moving on to the hospital, what the ac 130 can see and the Ground Forces can see. The j tech that was talking to the aircraft, did the j tech have eyes on the mds. They were d supporting a raid. General votel to my knowledge, e did not have eyes on either location, the intended facility or the other one. Audience okay. Did any americans have eyes on the intended target. General votel they were all located where the j tech was, so my understanding was no, they did not. Audience got it. And from what i understand, you had Afghan Forces forward, thats who we were supporting. Strike was authorized in self defense of americans. Americans were no near the target location general votel again, as i mentioned, the Ground Force Commander made the determination that the Afghan Forces that he part of ered with were his force. And so he made the decision to apply self defense in support of his force that included these Afghan Partners. Audience okay. So i understand the afghan building were on the way to that facility. So the facility was targeted pie extremists, i mean, there were no affects on target what i dont understand is theyre using ac 130, you are a whole suite of guns. You pick the gun for the situation. So if theyre not taking, you know general votel well, the report taking fire were from the mds building, and hats what prompted the call for self defense fires. One thing onlarify the j tech actually seeing the building. Aware, we probably have a variety of techniques fires low us to call for properly, safely, whether we can see the intended location or whether we cannot. In this case, they were using those procedures. Talkon. which is the they use the talkon procedure. Final question. Audience general, in the release of this report, it another the same time Doctors Without Borders facility has been struck. Can you affirmatively say that role s. Air power had no in the attacks on that facility . General votel i can u. S. Air poweray had no role in the attack on that facility. One nce can i clear up inconsistency. When this was debriefed in november, he said that the air crew was notified that they were striking the wrong target at some point during the attack on i think the and word that they remained fixated n the hospital because of the physical location im sorry, the physical description of the uilding, but it sounded as if that fact is different than what youre saying here today, that they were never notified during the actual bombing of the hospital. They were never notified that the wrong triking target. General votel thats my understanding. They had no idea that the facility they were striking was