Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke for the first time on Wednesday about a 2019 U.S. military airstrike in Syria that killed dozens, including several civilians, after a New York Times investigation published this week found it was never outwardly acknowledged despite being one of the largest civilian casualty incidents in the war against ISIS.

What You Need To Know

  • Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke for the first time on Wednesday about a 2019 U.S. military airstrike in Syria that killed dozens, including several civilians

  •  A New York Times investigation published this week found it was never acknowledged despite being one of the largest civilian casualty incidents in the war against ISIS

  • Sec. Austin promised more attention to and mitigation of civilian harm, admitting there were improvements to be made, including after a Kabul strike on Aug. 29 that killed 10 civilians

  • Austin said that military leaders should be held accountable, even as air wars like the one against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria made it more difficult to track civilian harm

Speaking at an infrequent Pentagon briefing, the military’s top official said his department would soon release two reports on civilian harm, and he committed to continued improvement in how the U.S. mitigates and reports civilian harm.

“The American people deserve to know that we take this issue very seriously and that we are committed to protecting civilians and getting this right — both in terms of how we execute missions on their behalf, and how we talk about them afterward,” Sec. Austin said.

“We have more work to do in that regard, clearly.”

The Times investigation found that the 2019 strike killed 80 people, including several women and children, but the death toll was downplayed and the true nature of the strike was never reported, despite multiple requests for internal investigation.

The U.S. military has been sharply criticized for severely undercounting the number of civilians harmed and killed in its airstrikes, especially during the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has been primarily fought from the air.

The nature of the fight has made it more challenging to record civilian casualties on the ground, though Congress has called for more rigorous reporting from the Defense Department.

Sec. Austin on Wednesday said the Pentagon would soon release a Rand Corporation study on civilian harm called for in the 2020 defense budget.

He also raised the issue of another deadly strike that drew ire this year: The late August bombing in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, which was originally thought to have killed ISIS-K operatives.

The military took responsibility for those casualties but found the strike was not due to criminal negligence and said no one would be punished.

Asked about the need to hold people responsible for grave mistakes like the Kabul strike, Austin said the standard of accountability was always evolving but necessary at the highest levels.

“I believe that leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership, and that's who we are,” he said.

Austin said he was working through new recommendations from U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command based on the Kabul strike, without giving further details.

“We take every strike very serious,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon us to look at our procedures and our policies to make sure that we continue to refine them. When we see we’re not doing things as well as we could, we should adjust.”