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secretary general lloyd austin reeves reporters on gaza and the russian ukraine were, comments on protecting civilians in gaza, and recruitment challenges with the military. this is just under 15 minutes. >> think secretary -- the secretary will give brief remarks. sec. austin: good afternoon, everybody. thanks for joining us on this trip and for local media, really appreciate you joining us this afternoon as well. it has been quite a day. as you saw her earlier, i had the upper unity to deliver the commencement address at south carolina state. it is always exciting to see young graduates get a chance to

be recognized for four years of hard work. in some cases there are probably those who work to more than four years, and it is important to see the proud parents in the stands, so that was a real special event, as is every graduation. today, this afternoon what we are going to do is take a look at some of the elements of our recruiting process. i will begin this afternoon's activities by talking to a number of noncommissioned officers, and those noncommissioned officers work in the fields, first of all some recruiters, and some that are part of the station here, and then we will have some noncommissioned officers that actually work at fort jackson, and they are in charge with

training new enlistees as they join the military. so we will see three legs of the triad come together, and that should be a pretty interesting discussion. i look forward to hearing from them in terms of what the current challenges are and any good ideas and initiatives they would like to see put into and then, i will administer the open of enlistment to a number of youngsters who are volunteering to serve their country. i am looking forward to that. later on today, we will go visit the leaders who are running the army's future soldier program. it is a program that prepares young men and women both physically and mentally to be able to meet the standards to

actually enlist in the military. that has been a very productive program thus far. i think the army has put 20,000 or so people through that program. that just demonstrates there is a pool of people out there who really want to serve but may not be able to initially qualify. but if you can help them by ensuring they are physically fit and doing the right things to prepare themselves to pass the tests, those people typically turn out to be pretty good troops. that kind of outlines the day. i will stop there and take your questions. >> thank you so much, secretary austin, for talking to us today. on israel, you and other administration officials have repeatedly said you are against any large-scale attack on rafah

unless israel can provide credible plans to protect civilians. officials have also noted that hamas deliberately embeds themselves inside citizen populations. can you get an idea of how israel can achieve a decisive, permanent victory over hamas that would also meet your standards for protecting civilians? do you think that is possible? axios reports the israeli security cabinet has approved an expansion of operations in rafah. there are reports the idf has in several eastern rafah. will you still characterize this as a limited operation by israel? sec. austin: thanks, matt. if the question is, is it possible to conduct effective operations and protect civilians? absolutely, it is possible. we truly believe that. that is what we endeavor to do in any operation that we

conduct. israeli military is a professional military. again, they have the ability to do both of those. there have been far too many civilian casualties thus far. we would like to see that trend change. so, that is really our focus. and in terms of how long that takes and when that happens, that will be determined i the israelis. but again, we want to see civilians that are in the battle space moved out of harm's way as they conduct those operations. >> i'm with the local media here and i am writing a story on recruitment. i want to know a few challenges when it comes the recruitment and how they are being addressed. sec. austin: yeah, i would tell you that recruiting has always been challenging. how do i know that?

because i used to be a recruiter many years ago as a young captain. it was a tough business then and it is a tough business now. what has made it tougher in recent years is that a couple years ago, we were faced with the conditions of covid, which didn't allow us to get into high schools and interact with high school students. and it also didn't allow us to engage centers of influence in a community like we typically do. when you couple that with the fact that this is the lowest unemployment rate we have seen probably in our lifetime, and it has been that way for several years, it makes it for a more challenging environment. as i talked to leaders of industry, they are challenged with making sure they can recruit and retain the right people. what we've demonstrated though

is once we bring people on board, they like serving. they like being a part of this great team. and that is evidenced by the fact that our retention rates and all the services are higher than they've been in a long time. and you recruit individuals, you retain families. that means there are families, they are pleased by and large by many of the things we are doing. my goal is to make sure we continue to do more things. reduce cost for our troops and families. and provide them more resources. that is why you are seeing me go after pay raises in recent years. we asked for 4.6% pay raise in 2023. congress supported us with that. in this last budget, 2024, we asked for 5.2% pay raise, the

largest pay raise in 20 years. in the next budget, the budget we are addressing right now, another 4.5% pay raise. that combined with the fact we are working to reduce the cost of goods in the commissary. reduce the cost of moving from station to station. we are doing a lot of things to take care of people. that is why the retention rates are as high as they are, but we want to take the very best people and turn them into better people. that is what we do in the military. there always be challenges to work through. having been a recruiter, i know that. i think we are doing the right things to recover from the covid period, and the fact we are faced with some very low unemployment rates. >> thank you for doing this. i know on the subject of ukraine, i know you speak with your counterparts pretty often then.

we do know from the last few days, russia has made a concerted effort to take advantage of the fact that ukraine is still waiting to get some of the key weapons and capabilities they need from the u.s. can you characterize the situation from the u.s. perspective right now, especially considering last night, supposedly ukraine it is sending reinforcements to the kharkiv area because of concerns russia is trying to take advantage of them not having the weapons they need, and may be how soon they might start to see these weapons and give abilities make a difference? sec. austin: thanks. you are right. i do talk to my counterpart every week. and, again, i would have to commend them on the recent work they have done to shore up their defenses across the board in ukraine. so, the weapons and systems and

munitions that we are providing them will complement the work they've been doing and allow them to be more effective in defending their territory. now, over the years, the last two years, we have developed the means and the processes to move things very quickly into theater once a decision has been made. in this case, anticipating that we could possibly get a supplemental, we leaned forward a bit and we reposition some critical things that we knew ukraine would need. air defense interceptors. artillery munitions. and those kinds of things. our goal was the flow those in as quickly as possible and that is happening right now. if you think about what has to happen as you begin to move things into theater, they have to go into country and be

redistributed to the point of need. that point of need will be determined by the ukrainians. if they believe that their most urgent need is in the kharkiv area, certainly, that is where they will begin to put most of the resources we are providing. so, we are in constant contact. we are going to try to address their needs in every way that we can. we are doing it in an urgent fashion. a number of things have to be done going forward. it's fascinating that this is a country, a small country with not very much military capability initially and they were invaded by the most powerful land force in europe. they have held that land force off for two years. again, they have done it themselves in terms of the fighting.

they have been able to do that though because we have provided them the security systems to be able to do it. not only does the united states, but also countries from nato and countries from around the world. you know that i convene a group of some 50 countries every month and typically it is ministers of defense that come together. we are talking about what ukraine's most urgent need is and working as quickly as we can to meet those needs. >> thank you. mr. secretary, what is your confidence level each of the services will -- sec. austin: there's never a certainty when it comes to recruiting. you just need to make sure you are doing the right things to be able to enable you to meet your goals. what we are seeing today, this

year is a much different story from what we were looking at last year. air force, army, marine corps, space force have all projected they will meet their year-end goal. services cannot meet their objectives on a quarterly basis, and some cases, take for example the army, they will ship more people towards the end of the year than they did in other months. we can anticipate to see that happen again. it happened last year. again, i think they feel pretty good about achieving their goals and objectives, and i do too. i feel really good about it and we will keep doing the right things. making sure that we have the

right recruiters doing this. making sure that we are advertising in the right markets. making sure we are providing the right information to young people so that they can make the right decision. my view, if people are provided with the information that educates them on the opportunities that are available with service, they typically make the right decisions. and parents make the right decisions, that's important. i remain very optimistic, but with recruiting, you can never be absolutely certain that one thing or another will happen. but i feel good about the things we are doing in the army, air force, marine corps, and space force. their projections are probably going to come true. >> thanks, everyone.

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