Shortly after taking office last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly polled the nation’s top commanders about cutting a program meant to protect civilians during U.S. military operations, ProPublica reported. Current and former defense officials told the outlet that Hegseth had bet senior officers would back his view that focusing on civilian security was “woke” and out of step with “maximum lethality.”
Instead, every commander rebuffed the idea, the officials said. The poll from early 2025 had not been previously reported, ProPublica said. The program, known as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, or CHMR, had stationed personnel inside major regional commands to help officials understand conditions on the ground and try to avoid or limit civilian harm.
In the poll, Hegseth gave commanders three options, according to a memo reviewed by ProPublica: cut 65 percent of staff but keep the effort running, continue with only a small centralized office in Washington, or eliminate the program. Nine commanders chose the first option to preserve as much of the work as possible, the memo indicated.
Central Command leaders said cutting the staff would raise the risk of target mistakes
Leaders of two commands, one overseeing the nuclear arsenal and the other focused on cyber threats, declined all three options and asked to keep the full program, according to the memo. Leaders at U.S. Central Command pressed to keep its full CHMR staff of 16.
A memo reviewed by ProPublica said eliminating or scaling back the effort would “result in decreased efficiency of U.S. lethal operations due to an increased risk of target misidentification and reduced battlespace awareness.” Retired Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, then in charge of Central Command, and several other senior officers involved in combat operations appealed to Hegseth to keep the program, a retired general said.
Another retired general said, “that intent was overridden.” Hegseth gutted the effort, leaving only a handful of people, current and former officials said. It was stripped of almost all of its funding even as the United States launched new campaigns in Somalia, Yemen, and Iran. One official summed up the approach as: “Bombs away!”
Hegseth later told a gathering of hundreds of generals and admirals, “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.” After U.S. missile strikes killed hundreds of civilians in Iran and Yemen, episodes that drew global criticism and questions from Congress, the program could soon be partially revived, officials indicated.
The first major military operation of Hegseth’s tenure – an air campaign in Yemen in the spring of 2025 – killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others.
Airwars, a British watchdog that tracks civilian harm from military operations, said the majority of the deaths came from just two strikes. The toll was confirmed in the Pentagon’s 2025 annual report for civilian casualties, The Washington Post first reported.
Hegseth described the Yemen operation at the time as a “clear, limited mission executed with ruthlessness, full stop.” By the time the United States began attacking Iran the next year, the civilian protection program was down from a little under 200 people to around two dozen, some working only part-time, current and former officials said.
Central Command, which said it needed a minimum of nine of its 16 staffers to function, was left with one person.
Separate reporting later described who stopped a planned Iran assault after Trump directed Hegseth to prepare one. On the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, a U.S. airstrike hit a school in Minab, killing more than 100 children.
Hegseth and Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander in charge of the Iran operation, were questioned about the strike before Congress. Hegseth said the United States does not target civilians and would investigate. Early reports on that investigation, which have not been publicly released, have said outdated U.S. intelligence led to the attack on the school.
In a letter to Hegseth in April, 11 senators said the school strike and other deadly attacks on civilians in Iran reflected “the administration’s broader disregard for the strategic, legal, and moral imperative to minimize civilian harm.”
They added, “This is a concerning pattern and raises questions about whether the administration is upholding international law and the laws of war.” A Pentagon spokesperson declined to answer questions from ProPublica about the letter and said the department would “respond directly” to Congress.
Other reporting said a top general later argued the Iran war had reached a dead end and pressed cabinet officials toward an off-ramp. The Department of the Army, headed by a civilian appointee, agreed with getting rid of CHMR entirely, officials indicated. Leaders at Central Command told Hegseth’s top staff in a memo that CHMR “enhanced our precision and accuracy, making us more lethal.” The memo added, “The operational and strategic value of this work is widely recognized.”
The Joint Staff disagreed with the Army acting secretary, who said in a February 2025 memo that the program was redundant and recommended that Congress repeal the law that set it in motion, according to correspondence reviewed by ProPublica.
In April, Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s under secretary of policy, sent a follow-up memo to Hegseth with one proposal: reboot the program at reduced staff levels with 70 full-time people.
Colby wrote that maintaining 35 percent of CHMR would address investigations into civilian harm, reports to Congress, and payments to those harmed. The same commanders Hegseth polled earlier endorsed the move, several defense officials told ProPublica. The proposal would allow regional commands to rebuild civilian harm reduction staff, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence would move from the Army to the Joint Staff, officials said.
One defense official said, “If not for the combatant commanders,” the program would be “dead.” Officials said the harm mitigation effort made up a tiny fraction of Defense Department spending, with the center near the Pentagon having an annual budget of $7 million and the cross-command total estimated at around $80 million before the cuts. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment about the poll or the program’s possible revival.
Published: Aug 29, 2026 10:30 am