HANOI, Vietnam –
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency received possible remains of a U.S. service member from the Vietnam War presented by the Vietnam Office for Seeking Missing Persons (VNOSMP) during a repatriation Ceremony at the Gia Lam Airfield, Dec. 13, 2025.
At the ceremony, the 171st repatriation ceremony held by the two countries, VNOSMP representatives handed over remains to the DPAA thought to be associated with a U.S. Air Force F-105 crash site in Yen Bai Province.
Kelly McKeague, DPAA director and Le Cong Tien, VNOSMP director presided over the event and dignitaries from the U.S. Embassy Hanoi; and Senior Vietnamese Ministry Officials from Foreign Affairs, National Defense, and Public Security were present during the ceremony.
During his remarks at the ceremony, McKeague thanked the Government of Vietnam.
“Thank you to the Government of Vietnam whose leaders in the early 1980s exhibited a great deal of faith and compassion to assist the United States in searching for and recovering the remains of American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen who were missing-in-action,” said McKeague. “Remarkably, this was ten years after the war, and ten years before normalization of diplomatic relations.”
In a released statement on the ceremony, U.S. Embassy in Hanoi stated that “The joint humanitarian effort is committed to locating and identifying U.S. service members who went missing in the war in Vietnam. These sustained efforts have been implemented for 40 years by the two governments since 1985.”
The embassy also noted that “MIA cooperation is one of the longstanding pillars in the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relationship that seeks to settle the war legacies between the two countries.”
The potential remains were recovered by one of the two Vietnamese Unilateral Recovery Teams, part of the 161st Joint Field Activity, which started in late-October and concluded at the beginning of December and able to operate during the U.S. Government’s lapse in appropriations.
“When DPAA teams were unable to travel due to the government shutdown, two Vietnamese recovery teams operated for 45 days, each augmented by 60 local villagers. It was the team in Yen Bai Province that recovered the remains that will soon be repatriated,” said McKeague.
McKeague ended his remarks stating, “To Vice Minister Giang, Deputy Minister Chien, and my VNOSMP partners, thank you!”
The potential remains were examined on December 5, 2025 in Hanoi by a U.S. and Vietnamese forensic specialists and determined that the remains might belong to a U.S. service member. DPAA will transport the potential remains to the Daniel K. Inouye DPAA Center of Excellence in Honolulu for further analysis.
To date, 1,067 U.S. service members MIAs have been identified from the Vietnam War.