Victory! No More Live Animals Will Be Shot in Military Trauma Training Drills
PETA was first to expose the U.S. military’s sickening practice of shooting live animals in gruesome trauma training drills purportedly designed to teach troops how to treat human battlefield injuries, and launched a full-frontal assault to stop it. Our mission was clear: Save the animals. End the drills.
Today, in a historic move decades in the making, PETA’s unrelenting pressure campaign on behalf of animals has great news: President Donald J. Trump today signed into law the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that sets military policy, which includes a compassionate amendment sponsored by Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida’s sixteenth congressional district that for the first time includes a ban on the use of live animals in live-fire trauma training drills across all military branches.
The bill’s passage gives all U.S. military branches under the Department of War (also known as the Department of Defense)—including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and their respective Reserve and National Guard components—their marching orders: No animal will be shot in trauma training drills in 2026, and the ban is not limited to any species. The bill says:
Beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall—
(1) ensure that live animals, including dogs, cats, nonhuman primates, and marine mammals, are not used in any live fire trauma training conducted by the Department of Defense; and
(2) in conducting such training, replace such live animals, to the extent determined necessary by the Secretary, with advanced simulators, mannequins, cadavers, or actors.
The bill’s passage is a major victory for animals brought by the intense, focused work of supporters like you who never once took their eyes off the prize. The collective power of your voice forced government leaders to not only listen, but to care, and, importantly, to act on behalf of animals. It was a sustained, herculean effort, undaunted by the passage of time, that will save countless animals from heinous cruelty.
How Did We Get Here?
This victory was decades in the making.
For years, the U.S. military conducted so-called “wound labs,” during which conscious or semiconscious dogs and other animals were suspended from slings and shot with high-powered weapons to inflict injuries for crude medical training drills.
In 1983, after PETA exposed and protested the Army’s plan to purchase dozens of dogs from animal shelters and shoot them on a firing range in Maryland, the military halted the program and permanently banned the use of dogs, cats, primates, and other animals in wound treatment experiments and training.
Yet since the military lifted its ban on shooting pigs and goats in trauma training drills in 1984, PETA has been on the vanguard of animal advocacy, consistently documenting and publicizing the cruelty and ineffectiveness of the military’s live-fire trauma training drills.
PETA released never-before-seen eyewitness video footage showing that training instructors hired by the military cut off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, shot and stabbed live pigs, and pulled out their internal organs. Some under-anesthetized animals moaned in agony.
PETA publicized whistleblower video from Tier I Group, a military contractor conducting live tissue training on goats for military personnel, showing instructors repeatedly cracking and cutting off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stabbing them with scalpels to cause internal injuries, and crudely pulling out their organs.
A PETA-backed provision in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act for the first time made human-simulation technology the new gold standard of trauma training, ensuring the U.S. military must use it before considering harming any animals in trauma drills.
After meeting with PETA, the U.S. Coast Guard became the first branch of the armed forces to end the use of animals for this self-proclaimed “abhorrent” training in favor of advanced human-simulation technology.
PETA never let Congress off the hook, either. PETA held briefings for representatives, penned letters, and even drummed up support for the Battlefield Excellence through Superior Training (BEST) Practices Act, which sought to require the military to use superior human-patient simulators instead of animals in trauma training.
PETA left no stone unturned, using zoning complaints to stop live tissue training in Virginia and helping to get the medical license of Dr. John Hagmann revoked. Hagmann, who gave out alcohol, Viagra, and controlled substances to students and is an accused sexual predator, originated the military’s live tissue training.
What You Can Do
While this is excellent progress, there is still much work ahead. Please help by adding your voice to ours and urge the Navy and the U.S. Department of War to ban cruel decompression tests on animals.
