WASHINGTON >> The intelligence breach was bad enough, current and former fighter pilots said. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s refusal to acknowledge that he should not have disclosed sensitive information about when American fighter pilots would attack sites in Yemen, they said, was even worse.

On air bases, in aircraft carrier “ready rooms” and in communities near military bases this week, there was consternation. The news that senior officials in the Trump administration discussed plans on Signal, a commercial messaging app, for an impending attack angered and bewildered men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States.

The mistaken inclusion of the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in the chat and Hegseth’s insistence that he did nothing wrong by disclosing the secret plans upend decades of military doctrine about operational security, a dozen Air Force and Navy fighter pilots said.

Worse, they said, is that they can no longer be certain that the Pentagon is focused on their safety when they strap into cockpits.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” said Lt. John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

He and other pilots said that each day since Monday, when The Atlantic published an article about the chat disclosures, had brought a stunning new revelation. First came the news that Hegseth had put the operational sequencing, or flight schedules, for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthi militia in Yemen on March 15 in the unclassified Signal group chat, which included several other senior officials.

“We intentionally don’t share plans with people who don’t need to know,” said one Navy F/A-18 pilot, who has flown frequently in missions in the Middle East. “You don’t share what time we’re supposed to show up over a target. You don’t want to telegraph that we’re about to show up on someone’s doorstep; that’s putting your crew at risk.” He and several other current and former pilots spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from the Pentagon and from allies of President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Hegseth called his disclosure a “team update” to “provide updates in real time, general updates in real time” to keep Trump national security officials informed.

But details of military operations are usually kept so secret that even the service members taking part in them are “locked down.” That sometimes means they are not allowed to speak to others who do not have a need to know, let alone tell people about the plans, the fighter pilots interviewed said. In aircraft carrier “ready rooms,” where flight squadrons spend their time when they are not in the air, crews burn instructions to destroy them.