WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Pentagon dismantled a program legally required to prevent and respond to civilian deaths in U.S. military operations, according to an inspector general report published on 13 May. The report concluded that the U.S. military no longer had the people, tools, or infrastructure needed to comply with two federal statutes requiring it to maintain a functioning civilian casualty policy and operate a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CP CoE).
The Civilian Harm Mitigation and Remediation program was created by Lloyd Austin in January 2022 under President Joe Biden. According to the report, funding ended for a data management platform, committee meetings had halted, and many dedicated personnel had been lost or reassigned. Only seven people remained reporting to the program, and they were locked out of all operations and relegated to a closet office in Virginia.
In February 2025, Elbridge Colby and Dan Driscoll separately proposed in writing that the program be cut or eliminated, the report said. One proposal recommended scrapping the program's action plan and its underpinning departmental instruction entirely. That same month, the military began acting as if the cuts had been approved without waiting for a response. One combatant command had largely divested its CHMR personnel, functions, and responsibilities as of March 2025.
The CHMR steering committee chaired by Colby and Christopher Mahoney held its last meeting in December. The committee did not assign clear offices of primary responsibility for the program's 133 actions until December, the final year of a four-year plan, and the program's implementation tracking tool contained data acknowledged as incomplete and inaccurate.
Colby, acting under secretary of war for policy, wrote in December that the Pentagon already collaborates with the CP CoE and provides sample materials related to lessons learned from previous civilian casualty and harm events, including strike cell tactics, techniques, procedures, and cognitive bias mitigation training. He said the department would deliver on its training goals by the end of next year, that a review of the CP CoE was underway, and that the center continued to operate with dedicated full-time staff.
"My assessment is that they've left a semblance of the department because Hegseth was taking heat for illegal operations," said Wes J Bryant, former chief of civilian harm assessments. Bryant was forced out of his job last spring when safeguards restraining the use of lethal force were removed.
"We are seeing devastating levels of civilian harm in Iran since February. If that's any indication of the Department's current approach to civilian harm after gutting 90% of it's CHMR workforce, it's hard to imagine what future US operations might look like if these programs are further degraded," said Madison Hunke, a U.S. program manager. The inspector general gave the Pentagon until 12 June to provide a plan.