gentlemen thanks for the opportunity to speak to you about the recent events in the audience or thanks for your time particularly when it comes to the the mirages that we're bronstein you have a sense now that anything has changed now that you're back to an operation is there any kind of shift here and what they're allowed to do with their authorities with the coalition with you how quickly can you there in an issue of authorities just want to make it clear that u s forces and coalition forces in the area when it comes to an issue of force protection self defense don't have any limitations they don't have any limitations so that's and been something that's been discussed and so you know with regard to employing fliers if there's if there's an issue of self investigation will certainly tease that out i've seen open source reporting to that effect i don't have any i don't have any information in operating chain that would indicate that there were limitations now when i say limitations you know part of the requirement is obviously debility integrate and i don't know whether there was any challenges integrating i don't know why the mirage is dropped didn't drop bombs during those initial passes on the i don't know if the you know on the ground asked them to do that those are things we'll find out the investigation st directly in support of that unit that was in contact with the system to this right it was it was it did not strike it did not strike possible yeah i'm not going to talk about what our capabilities are in the region but that minutes we had a remotely piloted vehicle that was a near it was a u s remotely piloted vehicle as soon as they asked for help within minutes it was retest to provide intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance for motion video one of the capabilities right over guess are they would have been a normal course of events i haven't seen the logs will have all the t s done the investigation but the normal course of events they would have asked discreetly for intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and then also supporting fires and specific  whether anyone to the head can count on either was there those aircraft or after those evacuations we're going to be sure that everybody was accounted for i don't have that level of detail in terms of who counted you know i mean i know what the procedures would normally be i  can't tell you if those procedures were followed at that particular time again that will be something that the money goes to geisha yes general will be increasing the tempo of missions and africa can we expect to see more deployment of troops and africa changes in the know i think it's premature to talk about what what additional troops or changes in our we would make look we're watching very carefully what the fall of rock and roll's will what the enemy will do you see that in fact that's one of the reasons i have seventy five he said defense or the representatives that are here tonight is to talk about the next phase of a campaign i described as an inflection point one of the places that we know says has aspirations to establish a larger presence is in africa we know how important libya president for the allocation of forces that meet what we have what we see is the threat what we anticipate the threat to be but i certainly i certainly wouldn't talk about what we will do tomorrow at this moment for now have to have the have the combatant commanders or the chiefs made any recommendations to the white house to change any of the changed troop numbers tempo are we in a white house spoke with you let us know about what you know one thing i would tell you just to make sure that we're clear we get requests for capabilities on a routine basis they come to me and then we frame those for decision by the secretary defense so there's constantly requests for capabilities that go back and forth between the combatant commanders in the secretary don't think a week goes by when we don't work a request from the combatant commanders to do that and sometimes it's a question of reallocating capability if you were talking to africa would reallocated either from european command or central command and then reallocated back when a particular mission is complete but that kind of activity happens all the time i think what you're really talking about is a much more sustained presence with a larger footprint and has been no discussion nor has there been a request for that troops that are on the ground right now has there been discussion of increased increase mission plan that they put out that quarter's understand was going to happen yeah i don't i don't have the details of that you know i don't know whether it was intended that they would know how long it was going to take or if they had point to stay overnight and just to be clear i think then what's the significance of the f b i being sure that you're on the first case in all there's an investigation it's being conducted by general officer at the united states africa command into the incident itself so that's the only investigation u s military with regard to the f b i it's fairly normal in counterterrorism cases for them to conduct investigations to get information intelligence that may be related to threats to the united states and i believe that's the capacity in which the f conducting investigation right now a quick follow up on whether or not your two wearing body armor u s forces i don't personally know how the how these soldiers that they were equipped if they're wearing body armor moreover you talked about the difficulty of mexican notification obviously there's a big political discussion right now about the right way to do that tough generally on just the difficulty the challenge of conveying to american families when they're about one of the last what they die for yeah  i think what you just zeroed in on is one of the things that we try to do and we do this in absolutely to do it myself is you want the family to understand the why and so i think one of the most important things that we were trying to do in this particular case is be able to explain not come come back i'm following up sergeant johnson's but i was that this morning in an interview that she had asked to see her husband's body but i've been told is that the case is there a reason why it's not you know a first of all i did hear that this morning and what typically happens and again been involved in these cases myself is there are times when we make a suggestion to the family that they may not want to review the remains at the end of the day the policy is it's the family's decision as to whether or not they do that so i can tell you what the policy is i don't know what happened in the case of mrs johnson but will certainly find out about i did hear say that today and certainly again from a policy perspective we would typically defer to the family's desires and we do that but i don't know exactly what happened in the exchange with mrs johnson and what would have normally been the casualty assistance officer that would have been supporting her  of the fallen are unsatisfied with the support to defy had to date or have additional questions we're going to go to every last laugh to try to satisfy their concerns or answer their questions i mean that's that's what we do in each and every one of these cases with mrs johnson certainly this initial reports and again you know i think my my understanding is that the body was reported by nigerian forces to u s forces so you know i'm going out in a little bit on that one because a i feel that maybe aren't familiar but well you know again in this particular case we've been operating there for many years and this is a tragic incident but it hasn't been a matter of routine so if you're asking me is it going to be a matter of routine that we suffer casualties in places other than niger or outside of active or if i still unease i would tell you know it will be a matter of routine that will suffer casualties we will unfortunately in a war that has been described as a generational war have additional casualties in the future we will do all we can to mitigate it but we're conducting these kinds of operations which we call train advise and assist we don't under the normal course of events accompany those local partner forces when contact with the enemy is expected so we that we do want to do things we either stay back of what we call the last covered conceal position right so that's that's before any contact is made or we don't even go on an operation if enemy contact is made outside of active hostilities our focus is to enable local forces to be able to conduct operations against the enemy ok it's meant to say t right now to africa i think it's shifting i'm not sure i'm ready to say it's shifting just to africa we're dealing with the challenges that exist from west africa to so these days and we've seen manifestations of it in europe we've seen inspired attacks here in the united states so we're dealing with a global challenge i believe that isis will attempt to establish a physical presence outside of iraq and syria now that they have lost their  they will attempt to establish and that's exactly why we conduct and the kind of operations were conducted in these year is to ensure that local forces have the capability to prevent that from happening you should include interviewing the wounded in the soldiers who were there at the attack back in the you know i don't want to get back to i don't i don't actually know the details of the f b i investigation i'm very familiar with the u s military investigation and a general from the time the initial troops in contact and to be aware of the americans were taken out of the area what was the total time of this entire impeachment do you have that well what i can tell you corny is that it was mid morning local time  in this year on the third of october when this all began and it was the evening local time on the sixth of october when sergeant johnson's body was recovered so there was ongoing operations throughout that period of time in the back to sort of thank you very much for doing this if i get one and then a follow up it will be investigation be able to look into what french intelligence or french military activity there was or me or may have been in the area of the attack leading leading up to the attack i absolutely absolutely are investigating officer will absolutely engage our friend porter french partners and interview the french soldiers that were involved i'm sure he'll interview the crews that were called in to provide support to include the rotary wing attack helicopters as well as the fixed wing so i don't have any doubt that all the information at the french have available will be shared with our investigating classified intelligence love on their side that's happening every day there's no it is no doubt about it i mean we are we are integrated in conducting operations with the french we are we have partnered with them there so we have complete transparency and sharing information in west africa with the french if i just follow up really quickly you mentioned national assets that deployed from the united states without you know specify guidance that we will only accompany those forces when the when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely there are other areas in africa where we have a different construct so what i just described is the construct that exists in west africa clearly and you've seen it in recent days we have a different type of operation against al qaida al shabaab and al qaida organizations inside of east africa so you know we tailor the conduct of u s forces based on the threat the bias in africa is to support local forces in dealing with the threat where there is a threat to the u s homeland american people or or our allies we're going to do whatever is necessary to address that particular threat so if we had only gets to be clear and use use an example if we have a specific threat to the homeland and local forces are unable to deal with that threat united states forces are going to deal with that threat but the bias is towards enabling local to what i don't have a specific time when they're wounded so if you're asking for a time between when they're wounded and when they were evacuated i don't have that in terms of the soldiers that were killed in action they were evacuated in the evening that's local time in this year in the evening on the fourth of october if you ok all thanks  that actually connect to abolishing disorganisation from the western hemisphere the southeast asia i think some of the conclusions the one that we are dealing with a trans regional threat and it's going to require more groups is local action but that local action has to be informed by the nature of the threat which is a trade regional threat and so cooperation will believe is important and then also or global efforts have to be informed by those  during the nato summit this summer at the invitation of president trump and i was just in brussels and briefed the north atlantic council on all twenty nine allies were very were paired to contribute even more to the overall campaign and after the president's call i think sure that we catch them if they're trying to cross borders trying to target our homelands and other very good presentation from the kingdom of saudi arabia further very important meeting efforts that they have taken on both countering the algae and we really of foreign fighters leadership may try to make their way to what we call say they would today's discussion was all about was information intelligence sharing about the movement of these individuals so we can prepare local forces to deal