By the Straus Military Reform Project

Author: Valerie Reed, Research Assistant

“A base structure is more than a military consideration.  It is a political arrangement of the first order that has bilateral, international, cultural, and economic consequences.”

~Report of the Commission on Review of Overseas Military Facility Structure of the United States, May 2005

Click here to access U.S. Military Bases in Foreign Nations According to the Department of Defense’s Property Replacement Value (PRV).

Click here to access U.S. Military Bases in Foreign Nations by Region.

In this fact sheet, the reader is provided with information on the U.S. military presence throughout the world. The fact sheet compiles a list of U.S. military bases in foreign countries, the number of associated U.S. personnel, and the acreage and plant replacement value of U.S. facilities, as available in the Department of Defense “Base Structure Report Fiscal Year 2007 Baseline,” with data current as of Sept. 30th, 2006.[1] In this fact sheet, we highlight the most recently available Defense Department information on U.S. military bases overseas as it exists, and we address discrepancies we encountered during our research.

The purpose of this fact sheet is not only to help identify the substantial U.S. military presence overseas, but to attempt to address some questions regarding U.S. manpower levels internationally. We often hear conflicting accounts regarding the number of U.S. military personnel based around the world. While a comprehensive picture of the exact number of U.S. military deployments internationally is not available in this analysis because of the problems we found in DOD’s data (identified below), we aim to present the available data as clearly as possible.  

We have consolidated the available information from the Department of Defense (DOD) and have organized it into two series of tables. Our principal source of information for this fact sheet was the Department of Defense “Base Structure Report Fiscal Year 2007 Baseline”. From this report, we used DOD classification of a base or “site” as either “small,” “medium,” “large,” or “other,” depending on its plant replacement value (PRV) to organize the data in our fact sheet. Plant replacement value, according to the Department of Defense, refers to how much it would cost to replace the onsite physical structures on existing bases if they were replaced using today’s construction methods and costs. 

The first series of tables in the fact sheet details U.S. military sites by country, in ranked order of highest plant replacement value (PRV) per country to lowest PRV per country. The second series also details the same facilities; however it does so according to regions, with the highest ranking PRV region listed first and the lowest ranking PRV region listed last. Although we noted a number of limitations in utilizing the Department of Defense PRV accounting methodology during our research, we proceeded to organize our table series according to DOD’s data, such as it is.  After all, it is the only publicly available official DOD data for identifying the location and size of U.S. military facilities in foreign nations.

One of the limitations we noted in the Department of Defense’s data was its criterion for sizing U.S. military bases and/or sites overseas – plant replacement value. The PRV measurement does not account for the actual level of manpower or usage of land of the U.S. on foreign bases. More specifically, the measurement of PRV only details the total replacement value of inventory found at U.S. bases and/or sites overseas. So, a large PRV does not necessarily equal substantial U.S. manpower or acreage; it simply calculates the monetary value of replacing machinery, infrastructure and weapons systems found on base. For instance, amongst the 32 host countries listed[2], Iceland is listed as having the sixth-highest PRV ($2.456 billion) for its Keflavik Naval Air Station.[3] However, this particular air station only listed 478 personnel onsite and no acreage at all.

Another limitation of the DOD’s data is the exclusion of particular countries, where there exists a large U.S. military presence, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, our research did not encounter any DOD figures for U.S. bases in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Both countries were excluded from the 2007 DOD Base Structure Report and therefore remain unaccounted for in our fact sheet.

The omission of data indicating a large U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan might be considered by some a special circumstance, in view of the “temporary” deployment of U.S. manpower to both countries as a result of the fighting there. An example of another base curiously unaccounted for in the Base Structure Report is Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. Although Camp Lemonier has been home to the Combined Joint Task Force in the Horn of Africa since 2003, no data is listed in the BSR for Djibouti. Nevertheless, according to the official DOD website for Camp Lemonier, “approximately 1,500 people serve at Camp Lemonier on any given day.”[4] It is readily apparent that DOD’s data on U.S. personnel on various bases is very incomplete. We do not know what other data is missing; these significant inconsistencies certainly merit further research.

Our fact sheet also highlights how, according to the 2007 Base Structure Report, only facilities that are owned, leased, or “other” are included in the DOD’s display. Facilities labeled as “other” represent the “number of buildings that are not identified as owned or leased and reported by the military services in their inventory.”[5] The BSR does not explain why U.S. military personnel and facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan are not accounted for as an “other” site. In fact, the 2007 BSR is the first BSR to have an “other” category for building structures. Previous Base Structure Reports had categories of owned, leased, and license/permit. In the preface section of previous BSR reports, the explanation for “owned” bases noted that “facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations” were explicitly not included.[6] This would seem to provide an explanation, albeit incomplete, for the omission of the Iraq and Afghanistan presence in previous reports. However, the 2007 report specifically omits this explanation in its notes section and accordingly makes an extremely ambiguous and incomplete presentation.  

In concluding our research, we observed that the BSR only provides information on U.S. manpower stationed at U.S. military sites within a country, not total manpower levels for each country. For instance, the BSR indicates that there is only one U.S. military facility in Kuwait, classified as an “other” site, which in the table means that it has a PRV of less than $10 million and encompasses less than 10 acres – not that, as discussed above, it is neither owned nor leased by the United States. The BSR lists a total of 21 personnel employed at this “other” site; however, we are all aware of thousands of U.S. personnel deployed to Kuwait.[7] Interestingly, the BSR addresses such an obvious discrepancy by stating in its preface section that its personnel data “should not be construed as valid Military Department Manpower Data.”[8]

The BSR is also short of a complete representation of the U.S. military presence internationally because so many U.S. military personnel are located in countries without officially described U.S. military sites. According to a DOD report titled, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,”[9] from Sept. 30, 2007, the U.S. has active duty personnel in close to 150 countries. However, the BSR only lists 35 countries and four territories.

As outlined in the Global Posture Review of 2004[10], the Department of Defense plans for new configurations of its international presence. According to the Global Posture Review, also known as the Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy (IGPBS)[11], many overseas bases are scheduled for consolidation and realignment, particularly in Western Europe. The IGPBS also proposes to open new bases in other locations deemed more strategically appropriate,[12] on the rationale that security priorities have changed since the Cold War and the U.S. basing posture should be changed to reflect new priorities.

In reviewing our fact sheet, one will note that the countries (or territories) with the highest PRVs are primarily situated in Europe and Asia. Of the ten highest ranking countries by total PRV of their bases, five are in Europe – Germany (2 large, 5 medium sites), Italy (2 medium sites), the United Kingdom (2 medium sites), Iceland (1 large site), and Greenland (1 large site); with three others in Asia – Japan (5 large, 5 medium sites), South Korea (1 large, 4 medium sites), and the Marshall Islands (1 large site), and the remaining two being in Cuba (1 large site) and in the British Indian Ocean Territories (1 large site).   

When grouped regionally, Europe has the highest PRV at $65,895.8M (350 sites), followed by East Asia and the Pacific at $53,104.0M (175 sites). The North Africa, Near East, and South Asia region has a PRV of $3,584.5M (13 sites), the Western Hemisphere has a PRV of $2,695.7M (6 sites), and Sub-Saharan Africa has a PRV of $365.1M (2 sites).  

Worldwide there are 14 large sites, 20 medium, 512 small, and 277 other sites, for a total of 823 sites.