U.S. Military Personnel Deployments by Country

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

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The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

There was no shortage of cuts proposed in Trump’s budget for 2018, which was released earlier this week.

However, one of the few departments that did not receive a haircut was the Department of Defense. If the proposed budget ultimately passes in Congress, the DoD would be allocated an extra $54 billion in federal funding – a 10% increase that would be one of the largest one-year defense budget increases in American History.

To put the proposed increase in context, the United States already spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined. Meanwhile, the additional $54 billion is about the size of the United Kingdom’s entire defense budget.

Country Military Spending (2015) Share
United States $596 billion 35.8%
China $215 billion 12.9%
Saudi Arabia $87 billion 5.2%
Russia $66 billion 4.0%
United Kingdom $55 billion 3.3%
India $51 billion 3.1%
France $51 billion 3.1%
Japan $41 billion 2.5%
Germany $39 billion 2.4%
South Korea $36 billion 2.2%
Others $427 billion 25.6%

“Be All You Can Be”

With over half of all U.S. discretionary spending being put towards the military each year, the U.S. is able to have extensive operations both at home and abroad. Our chart for this week breaks down military personnel based on the latest numbers released by the DoD on February 27, 2017.

In total, excluding civilian support staff, there are about 2.1 million troops. Of those, 1.3 million are on active duty, while about 800,000 are in reserve or part of the National Guard.

On a domestic basis, there are about 1.1 million active troops stationed in the United States, and here’s how they are grouped based on branch of service:

Military Branch Active Domestic Personnel As a Percentage
Army 394,236 35%
Navy 283,499 25%
Marine Corps 149,992 13%
Air Force 249,738 22%
Coast Guard 38,659 3%
Total 1,116,124 100%

Internationally, there are just under 200,000 troops that are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world.

Here are the top 20 countries they are stationed in, as well as an “Other” category that represents the rest:

Rank Country / Territory U.S. Troops
#1 Japan 39,345
#2 Germany 34,805
#3 South Korea 23,468
#4 Italy 12,102
#5 Afghanistan 9,294
#6 United Kingdom 8,479
#7 Kuwait 6,296
#8 Iraq 5,540
#9 Bahrain 5,504
#10 Guam 3,831
#11 Spain 3,256
#12 Qatar 2,976
#13 Turkey 2,234
#14 Djibouti 1,961
#15 Jordan 1,759
#16 United Arab Emirates 1,079
#17 Belgium 842
#18 Cuba 806
#19 Romania 667
#20 Greece 407
Other / Unknown 34,834
Total 199,485

In 2015, Politico estimated that there are 800 U.S. bases abroad, and that it costs up to $100 billion annually to maintain this international presence.

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4 Comments
Anonymous
Anonymous
March 19, 2017 2:46 pm

With peace breaking out all over the world, why do we even need a military?

Maybe something just large enough to keep our domestic bases open and maintained in case we need them again someday, but why anything larger?

starfcker
starfcker
March 19, 2017 3:02 pm

Everyone can quit crying about Trump’s increase in military spending. Not only is he offsetting the increase with deep cuts in other areas, but his proposed military budget is far less than obama spent every year for his first four or five years in office. We elected him to fix some things. Let him do it.

norman franklin
norman franklin
  starfcker
March 19, 2017 5:27 pm

39000 troops in Japan? I’m sure we could do with half that amount, same as in Europe roughly 60ooo. Why not take half of these and put them on the mexican border. That might make more sense. plus the added benefit of troops spending more money in the U.S. I actually thought we had more troops in Europe.

Anonymous
Anonymous
  norman franklin
March 20, 2017 8:30 am

I imagine a lot of them, most of them, are not combat troops we think of when we read about troops stationed somewhere.

A lot are support personnel manning everything from repair bases and naval docking facilities to hospitals serving a much wider theater of operations.