A May 14, 2026 report by the Department of War Office of Inspector General — the renamed Defense Department’s internal watchdog — found that a program Congress requires the U.S. military to maintain has gone largely dormant. Steering-committee meetings have not been held since December 2024. Funding for the program’s central data platform was cut. Personnel left their positions or were reassigned. The Pentagon’s own inspector general concluded that, as a result, the department “may not comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy,” a policy “required by Federal law.”
The Pentagon does not contest that the program has changed. It contests what the change means. Officials describe a review and a restructuring driven by shifting priorities and resources. The watchdog, members of Congress, and human-rights groups describe something closer to dismantlement — and point out that the department asked Congress, in 2025, to repeal the law underpinning the program in the first place.
This is an Open Questions piece. It does not allege that any individual broke the law. It records what the inspector general documented, what officials have said on the record, what evidence is public, and what remains genuinely unresolved.
What Happened
The program at issue is the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, or CHMR-AP, launched in August 2022 after years of scrutiny over civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes and other operations. It directed the military to track, investigate, and reduce civilian harm, and it created a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CPCOE) to centralize training and analysis. The underlying policy, DoD Instruction 3000.17, is required by federal law.
In Report No. DOWIG-2026-084, the inspector general found that the department “did not fully implement any of the CHMR-AP objectives by the end of FY 2025” — 11 objectives comprising 133 separate “implementing actions” left incomplete. The report documented concrete signs of a program winding down: the CHMR Steering Committee had not convened since December 2024; the Army had stopped funding the program’s data-management platform; the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence had lost large numbers of personnel and leaders; and the Civilian Harm Assessment Cells meant to operate across combatant commands were largely unstaffed and untrained.
The report traced the shift to early 2025. In February 2025, the acting under secretary of war for policy and the secretary of the Army proposed major changes to the program. In May 2025, the department submitted a legislative proposal asking Congress to repeal the law requiring the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. As of April 2026, the report said, the secretary of war had not formally announced a decision on those proposals — even as the program’s day-to-day functions had already stalled.
The findings became public the day before a May 15, 2026 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee that recently pressed the department over the $25 billion cost of the Iran war, where lawmakers questioned Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve. The exchange echoed a now-familiar pattern in which the department’s public characterizations have diverged from internal assessments — the same tension at the center of the dispute over how much of Iran’s missile arsenal survived the U.S. air campaign.
What Officials Say
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell disputed the framing that the program is being eliminated. In a statement responding to the report, he said: “Although final decisions regarding the [Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response] enterprise are pending, the Department remains committed to minimizing civilian harm caused by military operations and to meeting all relevant statutory requirements.” The department, he said, is reviewing the program “to ensure alignment with evolving needs and resource availability.”
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on May 15, defended the department’s handling of the program. He argued the Pentagon remained committed to reducing civilian harm and characterized the disruptions as organizational restructuring rather than an intentional effort to scrap the initiative.
Undersecretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby and the vice director of the Joint Staff were directed by the inspector general to produce a concrete plan for returning the program to compliance with federal law. According to the report and reporting on it, both wrote back saying they “partially agreed” with the findings but did not offer steps the inspector general found sufficient. The watchdog left two recommendations unresolved and set a deadline of June 12, 2026, for an adequate response.
Evidence Available
Several facts are documented and not in dispute.
The inspector general’s report, DOWIG-2026-084, is a real published document dated May 14, 2026, and it lays out specific, datable findings: the December 2024 cutoff of steering-committee meetings, the halted data-platform funding, the personnel losses at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. These are factual findings by the department’s own oversight body, not characterizations by outside critics.
The 2025 legislative proposal is also documented in the report: the department formally asked Congress to repeal the statutory requirement for the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in May 2025. That request is significant because it establishes that the department sought to end the legal obligation through legislation — a process Congress had not completed — while the program’s functions were already lapsing.
DoD Instruction 3000.17 and the original 2022 action plan are public. So is the structure of the inspector general’s process, which assigns management-response deadlines to open recommendations; the June 12 deadline is consistent with that process.
What is not public: the redacted portions of the report, the internal deliberations behind the February 2025 proposals, and the full text of the Colby and Joint Staff responses. The published report is marked redacted.
What Critics Question
The most authoritative skeptic is the inspector general itself, which concluded the department “may not comply” with a legally required policy and declined to accept the department’s response as adequate.
In Congress, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat, rejected the department’s restructuring explanation directly at the May 15 hearing. “I think a good number of members on this committee do not trust the Secretary of Defense on civilian harm,” Smith said. “And we don’t trust the notion that it’s just being moved around. It seems like it’s being gutted, and that there is no focus on it whatsoever.”
Amnesty International USA, in a May 15 statement, went further than the inspector general’s careful “may not comply” language, asserting the report shows the Pentagon is violating U.S. law by failing to prevent civilian harm. As an advocacy organization, Amnesty is a named but interested party; its characterization is stronger than the watchdog’s own wording, and the distinction between “may not comply” and “is violating” is one a reader should hold onto.
The congressional pressure tracks other recent oversight fights with the department, including questions over how depleted U.S. munitions stockpiles are after the Iran war.
Competing Theories
Two explanations are in circulation, each tied to named sources, and the available public evidence does not fully settle between them.
The first, advanced by Parnell and Driscoll, is that the program is being reorganized rather than dismantled. Under this account, the lapsed meetings, cut funding, and lost personnel reflect an interim state during a genuine review — the department says no final decision has been made — and the underlying statutory commitment remains intact. The “partially agreed” response to the inspector general would, in this reading, reflect disagreement over characterization rather than a refusal to comply.
The second, advanced by the inspector general and Rep. Smith, is that the department is effectively winding the program down ahead of a statutory change it requested but Congress never granted. Under this account, the February 2025 proposals, the May 2025 repeal request, and the simultaneous collapse of the program’s functions describe a coordinated drawdown, not a neutral pause — which would place the department out of compliance with current law regardless of what Congress eventually does with the repeal request. The inspector general’s refusal to accept the department’s response, and its June 12 deadline, are consistent with this reading.
The tension is sharpened by sequence: the department asked to be relieved of the legal requirement, did not get that relief, and the program’s functions lapsed anyway. Whether that sequence reflects bureaucratic drift during a review or a deliberate drawdown is the unresolved question.
What Remains Unknown
- Whether the department will submit a compliance plan the inspector general accepts by the June 12, 2026 deadline, or let the recommendations remain unresolved.
- Whether the secretary of war will formally decide to eliminate, preserve, or restructure the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, after more than a year without a formal decision.
- Whether the lapse in functions reflects an interim review state, as the department says, or a deliberate drawdown, as the inspector general’s findings suggest.
- How many civilian-harm assessments and after-action reviews were actually completed during the period of reduced staffing and halted meetings.
- Whether Congress will act on the department’s 2025 repeal request, attach compliance conditions to appropriations, or open further oversight inquiries.
- What the redacted portions of DOWIG-2026-084 contain, and what the full Colby and Joint Staff responses said.
The Bottom Line
What is confirmed: on May 14, 2026, the Department of War’s inspector general reported that a legally required civilian-harm program had largely stopped functioning — no steering-committee meetings since December 2024, data-platform funding cut, personnel lost — and concluded the department “may not comply” with a policy required by federal law. The department had asked Congress in May 2025 to repeal the underlying requirement, a request Congress had not granted. Chief spokesman Sean Parnell said final decisions are “pending” and the department “remains committed” to minimizing civilian harm. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll called the disruption restructuring, not dismantlement. The inspector general gave the department until June 12, 2026, to produce an adequate compliance plan after rejecting its initial response. Rep. Adam Smith said committee members “do not trust” the department on the issue.
What is not confirmed: whether the program’s collapse is a temporary state during a genuine review or a de facto dismantlement of a program the department wanted to end but lacked legal authority to end. The department frames it one way; its own watchdog and senior members of Congress frame it the other. The June 12 deadline is the next concrete data point — a date on which the department either submits a compliance plan the inspector general accepts, or does not. Until then, whether “restructuring” and “shutting down” describe the same set of facts remains an open question.
Sources 8 cited · 4 primary
- Report No. DOWIG-2026-084: Evaluation of the DoW's Implementation of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan
- Project Announcement: Evaluation of the DoD's Implementation of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (Project No. D2025-DEV0PD-0003.000)
- DoD Instruction 3000.17, Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response
- Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan Fact Sheet
- Congress clashes with Pentagon over civilian harm reduction program
- Pentagon weakening civilian harm reduction program, watchdog agency finds
- Pentagon cutting civilian harm mitigation program may break the law, says watchdog report
- Inspector General's Report Finds Pentagon Is Violating U.S. Law by Failing to Prevent Civilian Harm
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