Milling of hardened steel components provides considerable benefits in terms of reduced manufacturing cost and time compared to traditional machining. Temperature variation in milling is an important factor affecting the wear of cutting tools. The poor selection of milling parameters may cause excessive tool wear and increased work surface roughness. Hence, there is a need to study the machinability aspects during milling of hardened steel components. In the present work, influence of cutting speed, feed rate and radial depth of cut on milling temperature, surface roughness and cutting force during milling of AISI D2 steel has been investigated using response surface methodology (RSM) based models. From the parametric analysis, it is revealed that temperature increases linearly, whereas surface roughness increases non-linearly with cutting speed. However, for higher values of feed rate, an increased cutting speed considerably reduces the cutting force for specified depth of cut range. The present work also reveals that the selection of best cutting conditions is useful at the CAPP stage in the milling process particularly with tight tolerances.