U.S. Active-Duty Troops Overseas, Total (DMDC)

## What this measures

DMDC's "Overseas total": active-duty members assigned anywhere outside the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including foreign countries, U.S. territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico, and locations DMDC lists as unknown.

## Why it matters

The size of the permanent U.S. military footprint abroad, the long-run measure of how forward-deployed the United States is.

## How to read it

As of March 31, 2026: 174,428, 13.1% of the 1,335,749 active-duty members worldwide.

## What it does not say

Counts are where members are permanently assigned on the report date. They exclude people on temporary duty, deployed in contingency operations, or afloat at sea, which DMDC does not publish by country: the forces sent to the Middle East in a crisis, for example, mostly do not appear here. Includes the Coast Guard. The record breaks at the end of 2017: from the December 2017 report the Defense Department stopped listing personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and the overseas total drops sharply; Japan's Navy count steps up in the March 2018 report. Compare levels across that break with care.

## Source

Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), "Military and Civilian Personnel by Service/Agency by State/Country", quarterly: https://dwp.dmdc.osd.mil/dwp/app/dod-data-reports/workforce-reports. Public information (DMDC privacy and security notice). Read by /api/cron/dmdc-personnel-sync.