troopdata_rebuild_long is the data frame behind get_troopdata: U.S. military personnel by location and report period, for every country, territory and other location in the reports, the United States included.
Format
A data frame with one row per location and report period (a year and a quarter), including the following variables:
ccodeA numeric vector of Gleditsch and Ward country codes. Territories and other locations that the Gleditsch and Ward list does not cover carry the package's own codes (Puerto Rico 6, Greenland 1002, Guam 1008 and others, all above 1000 except Puerto Rico). These are not Correlates of War codes: Germany is 260, not 255.
iso3cA character vector of ISO three character country codes. A location with no code of its own carries its parent's (the Azores carry
"PRT"), and a few locations have none.countrynameA character vector of country names.
regionGeographic region, using the names of the World Bank regions. Countries take the region the
countrycodepackage gives them, territories and other locations with the package's own codes are assigned one by the package, and"Afloat"and"Antarctica"are regions of their own.yearThe year of the observation.
monthThe month of the report: March, June, September or December.
quarterThe quarter of the observation, 1 through 4.
year_quarterThe year and quarter of the observation.
sourceWhere the row's figures come from: the month and year of the DMDC report,
"Kane 2006"for a figure from Kane's data,"Stepwise Imputation"for 1951 and 1952, or a label beginning"Estimate"for a figure from public reporting. Missing where no report lists the location for that period, which is where the zeros described in Details come from; 17 rows with no source are not zero, the Iraq figure of 5,200 for June 2018, 2019 and 2020 among them. The rows of December 2022, March 2023 and June 2023 carry the label of their report although their Army figures are filled in.troops_adThe total number of active duty US military personnel deployed to the host country. In a row that comes from a report it equals the sum of the branch columns.
troops_allThe total number of US military personnel deployed to the host country including guard and reserve:
troops_adplus the seven National Guard and Reserve columns. Equal totroops_adbefore 2008, when the reports give no guard or reserve figures.army_adTotal number of active duty Army personnel deployed to the host country.
navy_adTotal number of active duty Navy personnel deployed to the host country.
air_force_adTotal number of active duty Air Force personnel deployed to the host country.
space_force_adTotal number of active duty Space Force personnel deployed to the host country.
marine_corps_adTotal number of Marine Corps personnel deployed to the host country.
coast_guard_adTotal number of Coast Guard personnel deployed to the host country.
troops_afloatNavy and Marine Corps personnel afloat that a report attributes to the location, 1950 through 2007. Not included in
troops_ad. See Details.navy_afloatNavy personnel afloat that a report attributes to the location. Not included in
navy_ad.marine_corps_afloatMarine Corps personnel afloat that a report attributes to the location. Not included in
marine_corps_ad.total_selected_reserveTotal number of reserve US military personnel deployed to the host country. This and the other guard, reserve and civilian columns are reported from 2008 and are missing for earlier years.
army_reserveTotal number of reserve Army personnel deployed to the host country.
navy_reserveTotal number of reserve Navy personnel deployed to the host country.
air_force_reserveTotal number of reserve Air Force personnel deployed to the host country.
marine_corps_reserveTotal number of reserve Marine Corps personnel deployed to the host country.
coast_guard_reserveTotal number of reserve Coast Guard personnel deployed to the host country.
army_national_guardTotal number of Army National Guard personnel deployed to the host country.
air_national_guardTotal number of Air National Guard personnel deployed to the host country.
army_civilianTotal number of Army civilian personnel deployed to the host country.
navy_civilianTotal number of Navy civilian personnel deployed to the host country.
air_force_civilianTotal number of Air Force civilian personnel deployed to the host country.
marine_corps_civilianTotal number of Marine Corps civilian personnel deployed to the host country.
dod_civilianTotal number of Department of Defense civilian personnel deployed to the host country.
total_civilianTotal number of civilian personnel deployed to the host country.
Value
Returns the full data frame containing observations of US military deployments by location (countries and territories) from 1950 through the latest report in this version of the package, March 2026.
Details
Report periods. Each row holds the figures of one period. The data have one report a
year through 2012 (dated June for 1950 and 1953-1956, and September from 1957), two for 2013
(September and December) and four a year from 2014 (March, June, September and December), and
they stop at the latest report. get_troopdata returns these rows with
quarters = TRUE. Its annual figures (quarters = FALSE) are the largest value of
each column over the periods of a year, taken column by column, so they are not stored here
and the columns of an annual row need not come from the same report.
Zeros and missing values. A country that a report does not list has 0 for that
period and no source. A zero therefore means either that the report prints zero or that
it does not list the country. Territories and the other locations that carry the package's own
codes, and a few small states in the years before their independence, have a row only for the
periods in which a report lists them, so the data are not a balanced panel for them.
NA means that the reports give no figure of that kind:
the guard, reserve and civilian columns and coast_guard_ad before 2008,
space_force_ad before September 2023, the branch columns for 1951 and 1952, and the
afloat columns as described below.
Figures that are not taken from a report. The source column marks them,
apart from the two cases noted under source above.
1951 and 1952 have no report.
troops_adfor those years moves in equal steps from the June 1950 figure to the June 1953 figure, and the branch columns are missing. This is done for countries. Most territories and other locations with the package's own codes, the"Afloat"location among them, have no rows for those two years.The Army reported nothing for December 2022, March 2023 and June 2023.
army_ad,army_national_guardandarmy_reservefor those quarters move in equal steps from the September 2022 figure to the September 2023 figure, andtroops_ad,total_selected_reserveandtroops_allare those figures plus what the other services reported. The other columns are as reported.troopdata_rebuild_reportsandtroopdata_rebuild_us_stateskeep those quarters as published, with the Army figures and the totals missing.The June 2023 report prints part of its overseas list one row low: the civilian columns from Montenegro to the end of the list, and the Navy Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and Coast Guard Reserve columns from Morocco to Wake Island. Qatar's line holds Puerto Rico's 2,201 civilians and Uruguay's the United Kingdom's 1,383. The figures here are read from the line below the one they are printed on, which is where the March and September 2023 reports and the report's own totals put them.
troopdata_rebuild_reportskeeps the report as published.Where the reports do not give the personnel deployed to a war zone, a figure from Kane's data or from public reporting is used: Afghanistan for 2001-2005 and 2018-2020, Iraq for 2003-2007 and 2018-2021, Kuwait for 2003-2007 and Syria for 2018-2021. These are totals only, with zeros in the branch columns. From December 2017 the reports leave out personnel deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and no outside figure is used after those years, so the values for Afghanistan from 2021 and for Iraq and Syria from 2022 are the handful of personnel the reports print and understate the U.S. presence. The outside figures for Iraq in 2018-2021 and for Syria in 2021 are on the June row only, and the other quarters of those years hold what the report prints, which is zero or close to it.
The reports for 1957 through 2013 are dated September (and December in 2013). A row dated June in those years is not a report. It holds a figure from Kane's data, or one of the estimates above, and is kept only for a location and year in which no report gives a figure or the report prints a zero in its place. Nearly all of these rows are zero.
Locations. Personnel are counted at the location the report lists them under. Personnel that a report lists under no location (lines such as "Transients", "Undistributed", "Departmental Headquarters" and "Unknown") are not in the data. Where a report lists two places under one country code (Japan and the Ryukyu Islands through 1973, for example) the row is their sum. The United States is the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Puerto Rico, Guam and the other territories are locations of their own.
Personnel ashore and afloat.
Before 2008 troops_ad, navy_ad and marine_corps_ad hold personnel ashore
for every location, the United States included. The reports for 1950 through 2007 count Navy
and Marine Corps personnel afloat separately, and attribute some of them to a location: to the
country of the nearest port or the country whose line they are printed on (1953-1976), and,
for the fleet in home waters, to the United States (1950, 1953-2007; from 1968 the reports give
that figure for the United States and its territories together). Those are in
troops_afloat, navy_afloat and marine_corps_afloat, beside the ashore
figures and not inside them. A zero there means a report that lists personnel afloat by
location has none for that one (1953-1976); a missing value means the report gives no figure
for the location (everywhere but the United States in 1950 and 1977-2007, apart from 171
Marines afloat at Cuba in 1950; the years 1951 and 1952; and everything from 2008). For 1954-1956 the figure also holds mobile units temporarily
based ashore, which those three reports do not separate.
Everyone afloat is also carried once, worldwide, in a location named "Afloat"
(ccode 10200, no ISO code, region "Afloat"), with values for 1950 and 1953
through 2007. It is not a country, and it includes the personnel the three afloat columns
attribute to locations: troops_ad added up over every row, that one included, counts
everyone the data place somewhere once, and adding the afloat columns to it as well would
count those personnel twice. (It is still below the worldwide total a report prints, which
also includes the personnel it lists under no location.) get_troopdata handles this through its afloat argument, which
leaves the attributed personnel out of the locations, adds them in, or returns them separately,
and adjusts the "Afloat" location to match. From September 2008 the DMDC reports count a
ship's crew at its home port, inside the state or country figure, and there is no afloat figure,
so the ashore Navy figures for countries and states that are home ports step up between 2007
and 2008.
The reports did not keep to that from December 2015 to December 2017. They list 77,120
personnel under "Unknown" in the United States block in December 2015, and between 88,500 and
104,703 in each report from March 2016 to December 2017 under "Armed Forces Europe", "Armed
Forces Pacific" and "Armed Forces the Americas", nearly all of them Navy. Those personnel
cannot be traced to a state or a country and are in none of the figures here, the
"Afloat" location included. The United States total and its Navy figure are therefore
lower in those quarters and return in March 2018: the annual Navy figure for the United
States is 278,123 in 2015, 188,184 in 2016, 198,679 in 2017 and 289,853 in 2018. Japan's Navy
figure for December 2015 (41,546, against 22,030 in September 2015 and 12,234 in March 2016)
is as that report prints it, and is why the annual figure for Japan in 2015, 71,567, stands
well above the years around it.