Major General Jeff Taliaferro, USAF
Vice Director for Operations, Joint Staff, the Pentagon
Jeff Taliaferro earned a BS in Human Factors Engineering from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He earned a Master of Organizational Management from the George Washington University and has utilized many other educational opportunities offered to him by the U.S. military.
He has served in a number of B-1 flying positions, including U.S. Air Force Weapons School Instructor. He is a command pilot with over 2,600 hours, including combat over Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan. He has commanded at squadron and wing levels and last commanded the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force Afghanistan and NATO Air Command Afghanistan.
His staff experience includes various operations, strategy, programming and military planning positions with headquarters of the U.S. Air Force, Air Combat Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Northern Command, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prior to his current assignment, Taliaferro was the special assistant to the commander at the Headquarters U.S. Northern Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.
He has been Vice Director for Operations, Joint Staff, the Pentagon since September 2019.
In the News…
Major General Jeff Taliaferro told a Congressional hearing that the U.S. Defense Department continues to classify COVID vaccines as optional because they have yet to receive full approval from the Federal Drug Administration. As a result, around one-third of military personnel are declining to receive inoculations.
“Acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds territory,” he said, stressing that the figure is based on “very early data.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby added that there was no detailed military-wide data on vaccinations but said more than 916,500 had been administered so far. By the end of last week, he estimated that more than one million members of the armed forces would have received vaccine shots.
Refusal of the shot within the military is on par with that of the general public.
The Pentagon makes most standard vaccinations mandatory for military personnel, but the COVID shots have only been approved by the FDA on an emergency basis and cannot be forced on people.
