Pentagon Cuts Civilian Protection Center Staff From 40 to Nine

The U.S. Defense Department reduced the staff of its Civilian Protection Center of Excellence from 40 personnel in January 2025 to nine by the end of that year, preventing the center from investigating the February U.S. attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, that killed more than 150 people, most of them children.

Wes Bryant, the center’s former chief of civilian harm assessments, was pushed out in 2025. Before the downsizing, the center completed basic civilian harm mitigation training for 212 personnel from military combatant commands, the intelligence community, the State Department, and other agencies.

The center was established in 2023 and was described by a defense official as hitting its stride in late 2024. It had been on track to reach full operational capability by the end of 2025. Department-wide budgets for civilian harm mitigation and response were cut in fiscal year 2026.

Staff and programs across the Department of War, including at AFRICOM and CENTCOM, were reorganized, reduced, or terminated by the end of fiscal year 2025.

The 10-person civilian harm mitigation team at CENTCOM was reduced to one individual, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, the command’s chief. U.S. Southern Command had no mechanism for dealing with civilian casualty reports after the U.S. attack on Venezuela in January.

When Airwars attempted to submit documentation, the Pentagon directed the group to submit it to the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. The center used the Maven Smart System to develop a tool that gives field commands a more complete picture of the civilian environment.

A current defense official said the system provided a better layer of protection for civilians. The center also developed an AI Assistant prototype using the Army’s AskSage platform equipped with civilian harm mitigation data. During an Army training exercise, the assistant shortened the timeline to produce civilian assessments by 97 percent.