The number of U.S. service members seeking formal discharges as conscientious objectors has skyrocketed under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over legal and ethical concerns about the Trump administration’s deadly attacks abroad.
Nearly six months into President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, thousands of civilians have been killed, and civilian infrastructure including bridges, railways, telecommunication sites, and water facilities have been destroyed.
Over the past year, the administration has also bombed 67 small vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing 223 people whom the administration has accused of “narco-terrorism” without providing evidence.
In response, service members who are concerned they’re being ordered to violate international law or carry out deadly orders with no clear mission or strategy are asking for a record number of discharges, MS NOW reported.
The Center on Conscience and War, which helps service members file as conscientious objectors, said applications have increased by six times their normal rate since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28.
The rate is at its highest point in 25 years, executive director Mike Prysner told MS NOW.
While most conscientious objectors have typically been junior enlisted service members, many of the 140 applicants Prysner’s group is currently working with have been in the military for more than a decade.
They represent all enlisted and officer ranks up to major, and many even attended service academies, according to MS NOW.
Although 18 service members have been killed and more than 750 wounded since the start of Trump’s war with Iran, most calls are not from service members who fear for their own lives, Prysner said.
Rather, they’re from people who are “scared of the moral and ethical implications of participating” in a war with no rationale or endgame—and of “killing for something that they don’t believe in and don’t believe is right.”
The GI Hotline at the Quaker House has also received a spike in inquiries about conscientious objector status, with 429 in March and 440 in April.
The group is currently working with about 30 applicants, compared to about five to 10 at any given time before the war in Iran, MS NOW reported.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.
To earn a discharge as a conscientious objector, service members must show a “firm, fixed, sincere, and deeply held” moral, religious, or ethical belief opposing their participation in war.
They must submit a written form—which can include supporting letters—and sit for multiple rounds of interviews with their chain of command, a chaplain, and a mental health evaluator—a process that can take up to a year.
Hegseth has sought to rebrand the Defense Department as the “Department of War” and vowed to introduce a “warrior” ethos.
In September 2025, he announced the Pentagon would go “on offense” instead of just playing defense, use “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” and embrace “violent effect, not politically correct” tactics.
He also concluded early last year that the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program was “woke” and gutted its staff.
That decision came despite senior officers warning that scaling back the program would “result in decreased efficiency of U.S. lethal operations due to an increased risk of target misidentification and reduced battlespace awareness,” ProPublica reported this week.
