The Pentagon’s cuts to civilian harm mitigation, meant to reduce and respond to civilian casualties in military operations, may be breaking the law, the agency’s internal watchdog said in a recent report.
Federal law requires the military to have a civilian protection program, such as the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan.
The Pentagon’s inspector general said in a new report that military commanders warned that cutting this program makes wars harder to win — it damages alliances, fuels enemy propaganda and wastes resources responding to avoidable incidents.
After years of U.S. military strikes killing civilians in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, the Pentagon created a detailed plan in 2022 to better avoid and respond to civilian casualties. It had 133 specific tasks to complete by the end of 2025.
Progress included new policies, new training and new oversight bodies.
But the military could not hire people fast enough, plus tasks that depended on each other kept getting delayed and the oversight committee did a poor job of tracking progress.
The report notes that officials denied the watchdog’s request to observe Steering Committee meetings and blocked access to the implementation tracking tool.
In early 2025, senior officials proposed gutting the whole program. Even though no final decision was announced, meetings ended, staff were reassigned, funding was cut and the data system was abandoned, according to the inspector general’s report.
One commander said the military “did not want to spend resources on actions or make future commitments for a program that may be significantly changed.”
The whole program essentially collapsed before anyone officially canceled it, according to the report.
The inspector general told leadership to fix it, which was partially agreed on.
First, it told the director of the joint staff — the top military planning body — to package years of hard-won knowledge about avoiding civilian casualties and share it consistently with combat commands worldwide. Second, it told Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of war for policy, to write a concrete plan spelling out how the military will get back into compliance with federal law.
Both officials wrote back saying they “partially agreed” but offered no concrete steps that satisfied the inspector general. The deadline for a satisfactory response is June 12.
The watchdog emphasized that whatever internal decisions are being made, federal law still requires that the program exist and function. The military sent Congress a proposal in May 2025 to repeal those laws, but Congress has not acted on it.
President Trump’s administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has faced scrutiny over deep cuts to the program.
An investigation by The New York Times found that Mr. Hegseth slashed the staff dedicated to preventing civilian casualties across combatant commands by more than 90%.
A group of 11 senators, led by Democrats Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, launched a probe demanding the Pentagon account for those cuts.
Lawmakers specifically questioned whether the slashed guardrails contributed to high civilian death tolls in the Iran war, including from a strike on a school in Minab in February.
