Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is bidding farewell to the forces and personnel he's led through a tumultuous term.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin bid farewell Friday to the forces and personnel he has led through a tumultuous term that had three major military crises, a global pandemic and a personal brush with cancer that became a flashpoint for the way it was mishandled.

A watchdog investigation into outgoing Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization in 2024 found that his secretive hospital stay resulted in heightened national security risk, in part because Austin took medication with the potential to impair cognitive function while still in sole command of the Pentagon.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin concludes a tumultuous tenure marked by military crises, a global pandemic, and a personal health battle. His leadership faced the controversial Afghanistan withdrawal,

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was hospitalized in 2024 and given medication that could affect his cognitive functions before he transferred his authority.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is responsible for the Pentagon neglecting to tell Congress and the White House that the former Army general was incapacitated last year due to treatment for prostate cancer as his office is required to do.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to inform Congress or the White House as required when he was incapacitated due to treatment for prostate cancer and later complications potentially raised “unnecessary” security risks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is recommending that the incoming administration spend $50 billion more on defense than President Joe Biden requested. Austin’s five-year spending plan includes a projection to spend as much as $1 trillion on defense as soon as 2028.

The secrecy surrounding Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s hospitalizations in late 2023 and early 2024 “increased unnecessarily” the risks to US national security, the Pentagon’s inspector general concluded in a report released on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will bid farewell Friday to the forces and personnel he has led through a tumultuous term that had three major military crises, a global pandemic

In a statement accompanying his report on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization, Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch said they “found no adverse consequences to [Department