Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gutted a key Pentagon program he viewed as “woke” after every top military commander rebuffed his push to dismantle it, according to a new ProPublica investigation.
Retired Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, then the leader of U.S. Central Command, and other senior officers urged Hegseth to keep the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program, which helps the military avoid killing noncombatants.
“That intent was overridden,” one retired general told ProPublica in a report published Tuesday.
The U.S. military has killed hundreds of noncombatants since Hegseth decided to gut the program last year, the investigation found. But after significant blowback, the Defense Department is now considering partially restoring it with 70 full-time employees, the outlet reported.
ProPublica’s previously unreported findings are based partly on an early 2025 poll in which Hegseth asked the nation’s top commanders to choose among three options: cut the program’s staff by 65%, reduce it to a small Washington office, or eliminate it.
“Nine commanders chose the first option to preserve the enterprise as much as possible,” ProPublica found. “Leaders of two commands, one overseeing the nuclear arsenal and the other focused on cyber threats, declined all three options, asking to maintain the full program.”
Central Command warned that cutting the program would increase the “risk of target misidentification and reduce battlespace awareness.” Its leaders told Hegseth’s staff that the program “enhanced our precision and accuracy, making us more lethal.”
One retired general told ProPublica that civilian harm prevention and “operational effectiveness are the same thing.”
“They’re two of the same coin.”
But Hegseth still stripped the program of nearly all its funding, while severely slashing its workforce.
A defense official summarized Hegseth’s approach in two words: “Bombs away!”
The Defense Department did not respond to ProPublica's request for comment. The Pentagon acknowledged that its 2025 military operation in Yemen killed 153 civilians. A U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school the following year killed more than 100 children, the outlet reported.
