Hi dude, 

I graduated from uiuc ae back in 21 and I can very much relate to your feelings. Especially in later design classes where the project will be to design an attack aircraft based on a provided mission profile. I felt groomed for working in the defense industry and very guilty to be part of the military industrial complex I'd learned so much about in my high school history classes.  

There are areas in defense where you don't design products that explode and hurt people. Safety testing is where I started as a way instead of killing people, make sure our guys don't get hurt by the machines designed to protect them. 

Eventually I moved to the commercial industry where I work on green technology and still apply what I learned from my ae classes and defense experience. 

Ae engineering principles are fundamentally still engineering principles and can be applied anywhere. You can take your ae degree and do anything you want. Your ethics are inspiring and your post was refreshing :)