Pentagon quietly shut legally required program to prevent civilian deaths by military, watchdog finds | US military
Pentagon’s He quietly dismantled a program he was legally required to operate to prevent and respond to civilian deaths in U.S. military operations, according to its internal watchdog.
A. report The report, issued by the department’s inspector general, concluded that the U.S. military no longer has the people, tools or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal laws that require it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).
Donald Trump’s administration accused Deep cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian harm reduction and response (CHMR) program, designed to address training and procedures critical to limiting harm to civilians on battlefields.
Although the program was not officially canceled, the inspector general’s report noted that funding for the data management platform had ended; committee meetings had stopped; and many devotees personnel were lost or redeployed.
“As a result, DoW may not comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy,” the report said. “It is a policy required by federal law.”
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
The program was created by then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin. in January 2022Under Joe Biden, following years of deadly US bombing campaigns in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Civilian casualty monitor Airwars estimates that U.S. drones and airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians (perhaps as many as 48,000) in the 20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has recently come under fire for deadly attacks on Iran; This includes a US attack on a girls’ school in Minab that killed at least 175 people, mostly children.
Limiting casualties was not a top priority during Hegseth’s tenure at the War Department. It was rebranded last September under the supervision of the Department of Defense. Addressing civilian casualties in Iran, he accused the country’s regime of placing rocket launchers in civilian areas and claimed that no country in history has taken more measures to prevent civilian deaths than the United States.
The inspector general’s report and people familiar with the office tell a different story.
“My assessment is that they abandoned part of the department because Hegseth was outraged over illegal operations,” said Wes J Bryant, an air force combat veteran who was chief of civilian harm assessments for the CP CoE program.
He described a series of forced resignations and stalled investigations since Hegseth took office, and said only seven people remained reporting to the program and that they had been “removed from all operations” and sent to a “secret office” in Virginia.
Bryant was forced to lose his job last spring as the Trump administration lifted safeguards that once prevented U.S. forces from using lethal force, according to a report. ProPublica report.
The inspector general’s report, released May 13, marks a turning point in February, when two top officials — undersecretary of war for policy Elbridge Colby and Army secretary Dan Driscoll — separately suggested to Hegseth that the program be cut or eliminated.
One recommendation, according to the report, went further and suggested that the action plan and the departmental instructions supporting it be scrapped altogether. The military then began acting as if the cuts had already been approved, without waiting for any response.
Later that month, the United States launched an attack on Iran.
Responding to a draft report in December, Colby argued in a letter that the Pentagon was in compliance with federal law, claiming that its leadership was “already collaborating with the CP CoE and providing components with sample materials on lessons learned from previous civilian casualties and harm incidents, including examples of attack cell tactics, techniques, procedures, and cognitive bias reduction training.”
Colby said the department will meet its training goals by the end of next year. His letter said the CP CoE’s review was “ongoing” and claimed the unit continued to operate with “dedicated full-time staff”.
The CHMR steering committee, a high-level body that will oversee the entire program and chaired by Colby and deputy chief of staff Christopher Mahoney, held its last meeting in December, according to the report.
A combatant command official told inspectors general that their commander had “substantially divested CHMR personnel, functions and responsibilities as of March 2025,” weeks after the proposals emerged. Another told the IG that they “did not want to spend resources or make future commitments on a program that could be significantly changed.”
The report found that the executive committee did not assign clear offices of primary responsibility to each of the program’s 133 actions until December, the final year of the four-year plan. The app monitoring tool contained data that a senior official admitted was “incomplete and inaccurate.”
The deadliest US attack on Iran since the US and Israel started the war took place on February 28 on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab; This occurred around the same time the inspector general found that CHMR’s operations had ground to a halt.
The inspector general gave the Pentagon until June 12 to submit a plan to the office.
“We have been seeing devastating levels of civilian harm in Iran since February,” said Madison Hunke, U.S. program manager for the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “If this is indicative of the Department’s current approach to civilian harm after eviscerating 90% of the CHMR workforce, it is difficult to imagine what future U.S. operations might look like if these programs worsen.”
