The Pentagon unveiled a memorandum from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin detailing changes to the military’s drone program that are intended to curb civilian casualties.
Back in late January, after multiple high-profile blunders, Austin issued a memorandum directing the creation of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), and his memo from today included details on what CHMR-AP would entail.
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“The action plan, we think, improves our ability to understand the causes of civilian harm, and continually improve our approach to civilian harm mitigation and response ― again, in a systemic fashion, and you will see in the plan considerable effort to build in not only new institutions, but also resource those institutions,” a senior defense official told reporters Thursday.
The memo established the creation of a CHMR Steering Committee with the intent of providing executive-level direction, guidance, and oversight of the Department of Defense’s CHMR. It also established the creation of “a civilian protection center of excellence to expedite and institutionalize the advancement of knowledge, practices, and tools for preventing, mitigating, and responding to civilian harm.”
The Defense Department’s new policy announcement comes just shy of the one-year anniversary of the botched strike that prompted skepticism of the current program.
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The military launched a strike on Aug. 29, 2021, in Afghanistan in which planners believed a man posed an imminent threat to U.S. service members who were evacuating at-risk Afghans from the Kabul airport. The target was actually misidentified. The man turned out to be an aid worker and was killed along with nine other people, including seven children.
DOD’s new policy does not answer every question, such as whether service members would be punished for a botched strike.
