Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military has identified the three soldiers killed in the Black Hawk collision with a civilian airliner near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

In a short video clip released by the Defense Department, Hegseth said the fatal flight was an “annual proficiency training flight” and revealed the deceased soldiers had been identified but that their identities were not being released yet.

“Not all kin have been notified, so we’re going to withhold ranks and names at this point,” Hegseth said. “We do know on our side who was involved. It was a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation. They did have night vision goggles.”

The 12th Aviation Battalion was granted a 48-hour operational pause on contingency missions as the Army’s investigative team looks into what happened.

“We anticipate that the investigation will quickly be able to determine whether the aircraft was in the quarter at the right altitude at the time of the incident,” Hegseth said.

He concluded by expressing his condolences to those involved.

American Airlines flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, collided with the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk at approximately 8:48 p.m. Wednesday. The airliner had 64 people on board while the helicopter had three.

At a press conference alongside District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday morning, D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Chief John Donnelly Sr. updated the public on rescue and recovery operations.

“Despite all those efforts, we are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” he said. “We don’t believe there are survivors.”

So far, 27 bodies have been recovered.

Reflecting Hegseth’s comment that the flight was an annual proficiency training flight, Duffy dismissed concerns that the pilots may have been inexperienced due to the label of a training flight.

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“This was classified as a training mission,” he said. “Sometimes, people can think a training mission is someone who is inexperienced in the cockpit. We call these missions flown in the D.C. area training missions, as our pilots are getting hours of training experience. Don’t read into that.”

In a statement from Ron McLendon II, the deputy director of public affairs for the Military District of Washington, it was revealed that the Black Hawk helicopter was from Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, Davison Army Airfield, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The Federal Aviation Administration, Army, and National Transportation Safety Board will all investigate, with the latter leading.