(U.S. Department of War Transcript, March 10, 2026)
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Well, to our fellow Americans, brave warriors and steadfast allies, good morning. You know, as someone who led troops, led soldiers in the streets of Baghdad and Samarra, Iraq and who trained counterinsurgents in Kabul, Afghanistan and who still carries the weight of brothers lost to Iranian terrorist proxies, many backed by the same Iranian regime we’re confronting now, this fight, Operation Epic Fury, it hits home. Our generation understands this fight.
For 47 years, these barbaric savages in the Iranian regime have murdered our brothers in arms, my guys, your guys, our guys through their terrorist proxies and cowardly attacks. Now they race toward a nuclear bomb to hold the world hostage. The Iranians have targeted and killed thousands of my American brothers.
That race to a nuclear bomb, President Trump will never allow it, not now, not ever, not on our watch. The mullahs are desperate and scrambling. Like the terrorist cowards they are, they fire missiles from schools and hospitals, deliberately targeting innocents because they know their military is being systematically degraded and annihilated.
Iran’s neighbors, and in some cases former allies in the Gulf, they’ve abandoned them, and their proxies, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas, either broken, ineffective or on the sidelines. Iran stands alone and they are badly losing.
On day ten of Operation Epic Fury, we are winning with an overwhelming and unrelenting focus on our objectives, which are the same as the day I gave my first briefing here on Operation Epic Fury. They’re straightforward and we are executing them with ruthless precision.
One: destroy their missile stockpiles, their missile launchers and their defense industrial base; missiles and their ability to make them. Two: destroy their Navy. And three: permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever. It’s a laser focused, maximum authority mission delivered with overwhelming and unrelenting precision, no hesitation, no half measures.
As President Trump declared yesterday, we’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force. We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated, but we do so, we do so on our timeline and at our choosing.
For example, today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran, the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever. So, that’s on one hand. On the other hand, the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet, just the bifurcation, just the trendlines that we talked about on our first briefing.
You see, this is not 2003. This is not endless nation building under those types of quagmires we saw under Bush or Obama. It’s not even close. Our generation of soldier will not let that happen again, and nor will this president, who very clearly ran against those kinds of never-ending, nebulously scoped missions. Those days are dead.
Instead, we’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance and an unbreakable will to accomplish the president’s objectives on our timeline. We stay locked on the target, because here at the Department of War that’s our job.
Now, the chairman and I having just returned from Dover last night, our troops and their families and the enormous sacrifice that they make is certainly heavy on my mind, so I’ll close with Scripture, drawing strength from Psalm 144.
Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge. May the Lord grant unyielding strength and refuge to our warriors, unbreakable protection to them and our homeland, and total victory over those who seek to harm them. And amen. God bless our troops and this mission.
Mr. Chairman, over to you.
GENERAL DAN CAINE: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here. I’m here today to continue the updates to the American people and to those in the room on Operation Epic Fury.
First, let me start with honoring our fallen. As the secretary said, on Saturday and again last night at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, our nation’s leaders honored our returning fallen as they arrived home for their final time. Last week I shared a few of the names, and today I want to share the rest.
Major Jeffrey O’Brien and CWO3 Robert Marzan were the final two fallen to return home and members of the US Army Reserve’s 103rd Sustainment Command out of Des Moines, Iowa. Last night, as the news has been reporting, we honored the return of Staff Sergeant Benjamin Pennington of the US Army’s 1st Space Brigade from Fort Carson, Colorado.
When I met Ben’s family last night, his mom, his dad and his sister, they showed me a picture, a drawing that Ben had made when he was in kindergarten. It was clear all the way back then that Ben wanted to do one thing in his life, and he wanted to serve his country and be a soldier. And to the Penningtons, just know how Ben was absolutely a great one.
And finally, Major Sorffly Davius, who returned home this weekend after sadly passing away from a medical condition while on duty in Kuwait. We welcome him home as well and mourn with his family.
To the families and the families of all of our fallen, we share in your profound grief. The joint force remains eternally grateful for your sacrifice and the gift of a great example that your service members have given all of us. I want you to know that their names will never be forgotten, and you and your family are part of our joint force family forever.
Let me talk a little bit about the progress thus far, acknowledging that Admiral Cooper will likely continue to give updates from CENTCOM. As the secretary said, we’re in the 10th, moving in the 11th day of Operation Epic Fury. The joint force remains focused on three military objectives: continue to destroy Iranian ballistic missiles and drone capability in order to prevent attacks on the U.S. and others throughout the region. And this means attacking launch sites, command and control nodes, stockpiles before they can threaten our personnel, our facilities and our partners.
Second, we continue to strike the Iranian Navy and their capabilities in order to do things like sustain movement through the Straits of Hormuz. And third, we continue to start working on and going deeper into Iran’s military and industrial base in order to prevent the regime from being able to attack Americans, our interests and our partners for years to come and project power outside their borders. This means servicing production facilities, research and development sites and infrastructure.
Let me turn to the map…Since our last update, CENTCOM continues to make progress across the southern flank. To date, they’ve struck more than 5,000 targets. U.S. Strategic Command bombers recently dropped dozens of 2,000 pound GPS penetrating weapons on deeply buried missile launchers across the southern flank. We also have struck several one-way drone factories to get at the heart of their autonomous capability.
And of course, alongside our regional partners along the southern flank, continued to execute intercepts against one way attack drones using fighters and attack helicopters. Our strikes mean we’ve made significant progress in reducing the number of missile and drone attacks out of Iran.
Ballistic missile attacks continue to trend downward 90 percent from where they’ve started, and one way attack drones have decreased 83 percent since the beginning of the operation, a testament to our air defenders and our air defense systems. And as I said, our partners in the region continue to do great work as well.
Second, we’re making substantial progress towards destroying the navy in the first ten days of the conflict. We’re more than 50 Iranian naval ships into the campaign using a combination of artillery, fighters, bombers and sea launched missiles. As Admiral Cooper noted last Thursday, we struck and sank an Iranian drone carrier ship, and U.S. CENTCOM continues today to hunt and strike mine laying vessels and mine storage facilities. This — this work will continue.
Third, we’ve begun to target Iran’s military and industrial complex, again focusing on centers of gravity to get upstream of the shooters out in the field in order to deny them the ability to continue to generate those one-way attack drones.
Let me spend a minute talking about the joint force across the area of responsibility. This is gritty and tireless work, and I cannot begin to explain how incredibly proud I am of the extraordinary courage, tenacity and grit and professionalism within the joint force. Last time I had a chance to talk about the Army’s incredible logisticians who are out there sustaining the fight. Today I want to highlight a few groups of sailors.
First, I want to thank the men and women of the Ford Carrier Strike Group and their families, and let all of them know how grateful I am for their leadership and service. The crews on board this strike group have already endured months at sea, only to get their deployment extended.
These exceptional Americans rogered up, all supported by their families, continue to stand the watch, taking the fight to the enemy over and over again night after night. Aboard ships like the USS Ford and the Abraham Lincoln are a special group of sailors I want to highlight today. These are the men and women, the sailors up on the roof, running operations on the flight deck. With an average age of the early 20s, these are the unsung heroes of naval aviation.
These young sailors, known for wearing yellow shirts, are in charge of the catapults, taxiing jets around on the flight deck, shooting jets off the front end and recovering jets off the back end. They are literally involved with every single movement on the roof on an aircraft carrier. They are the last ones that a naval aviator sees before getting shot off the front end and the first one that a naval aviator sees after safely trapping on the back end.
And just for a minute, imagine you’re standing on that aircraft carrier flight deck. There’s 30 knots of wind in your face. The deck is slippery, covered in grease. It’s noisy. There are propellers spinning. There’s jet blast everywhere. The helicopters are running. Your head is on a swivel and you’re trying to direct a multi-million dollar fighter into a one foot square box so that those naval aviators can be shot off into the black of night to go do America’s work.
Those jets are fully loaded with missiles and bombs, and they are a world class team combined with the naval aviation and the aviators in those jets. This beautiful symphony of American spirit is the definition of perfectly organized chaos, and these crews do it every single time the carrier is at work, oh, by the way, in the middle of the night and oftentimes in the pouring rain.
These are dedicated young people who take the road less traveled to serve their great nation doing the deeds that we need them to do. America’s enlisted force is the pride of every nation’s military, certainly ours, and the envy of every other one as well. Each and every one of them out there across the joint Force are extraordinary. And in particular, today I want to highlight the yellow shirts.
Ladies and gentlemen, our work continues. It’ll continue to be difficult. I ask every American to keep our deployed force and their families in our thoughts. Combat deployments can be tough on the force and the families, and it’s important that we continue to remember that.
I remain deeply humbled by the 2.8 million members of the joint force. And I’ll end where I started, and that’s remembering our fallen and their families, whose sacrifice will be felt forever.
