My guess is that they perhaps previously employed someone who subsequently had a fundamental ethical objection to what they were doing, or maybe got deployed in

My guess is that they perhaps previously employed someone who subsequently had a fundamental ethical objection to what they were doing, or maybe got deployed into a war zone. If you're doing something which might be politically sensitive it does make sense to have some idea of your employees views. I'm not sure exactly what the rules are on this (in the UK). I know that officially you're not allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex, race and age but I'm not sure about political views. The rest of the interview, which was about the technical details, was quite congenial but I knew from the initial question that I wasn't going to get the job. If I had known that the job was primarily military and involved with the Afghan war I wouldn't even have bothered to apply, but the company's web site didn't make this clear and showed only civilian/industrial applications. In this case a phone based rather than face to face initial interview would have saved time and expense for all those concerned.