US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says that while coordinating the rescue of the downed aviator in Iran, authorities were communicating with each other for 45 hours straight.
“Forty-five hours and 56 minutes,” Hegseth says, flanked by US President Donald Trump and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.
“For 45 hours and 56 minutes, we held that call open for coordination. From the moment our pilots went down, our mission was unblinking. The call never dropped, the meeting never stopped [and] the planning never ceased.”
