How Many Military Bases Does The U.S. Have Around The World?

One of the few metrics that America ranks first in is military spending. According to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, the Department of Defense received $841 billion, which means America's military has plenty of money for research & development of new equipment, funding for personnel, and military bases around the world. According to the CATO Institute, as of 2021, the United States military has roughly 750 bases spread out across 80 countries. Al Jazeera points out, "The actual number may be even higher as not all data is published by the Pentagon."

If 750+ sounds like a lot of bases to you, that's because it is. To put it into perspective, America has over three times as many military installations as the next highest country, the United Kingdom, which has 145 bases. Not that it's a competition, but it is staggering to see the difference. That's not including all the bases that are stateside or all of the aircraft carriers at sea that essentially serve as a floating base, either. The top three countries that have US bases are Japan with 120, Germany with 119, and South Korea with 73 bases. If you see a connection between the countries that have the most bases and places that have had significant conflicts, you're onto something.

When you're deployed with the military, you're deployed to one of two types of installations. It's either a base, which is typically a larger installation of more than 10 acres, or a lily pad, a smaller, sometimes temporary installation. Roughly 40% of American bases are lily pads. Of course, if you're in the Navy, you can also be deployed on an aircraft carrier, which can be positioned near regions without a US base of any kind.

Many of the military installations the United States keeps around the world came about after the events of World War II, with Japan and Germany being home to so many. A series of conflicts and events prompted the country to hold onto that position by expanding its military infrastructure to other countries. While the Korean Peninsula was split in 1945, the North eventually invaded the South, leading to the Korean War. When America allied with South Korea against the USSR and China-backed North Korea, it deployed 1.78 million servicemembers to the country to protect the DMZ.

The military having such a broad reach gives the United States the ability to keep not-so-friendly regions around allies in check, deploy humanitarian missions expediently for allied nations, and give American forces access to virtually any area of operation when a conflict arises. This was especially important during the Cold War when regions were vulnerable to influence from the Soviet Union, and America aimed to contain communism.

Does America have a lot of bases around the world? Without question. We haven't even touched on the number of military bases the country has on its own soil, though, and when you add that to the total, it becomes even more overwhelming. Every state has at least one military base, camp, fort, or otherwise. Obviously, some states have more. California, for example, has somewhere around 33 bases, including Reserve and National Guard installations. That's not counting the various federally funded research facilities that may have military personnel amongst its civilian employees.

Texas, on the other hand, has half as many with 15 installations, while Florida has around 20, give or take. Overall, the continental United States has more than 300 military bases, big and small. Exact numbers are difficult to come by as the Pentagon doesn't exactly make those stats readily available.

One of the largest installations is located west of the Rockies in Washington state. Joint Base Lewis–McChord formed in 2010 after the Base Realignment and Closure Commission combined Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base together. It takes up 414,000 acres and houses over 209,000 personnel, including the 62nd Airlift Wing that operates a fleet of C-17 Globemaster IIIs. Overseas, on the other hand, South Korea hosts the largest American base. It's Camp Humphreys, and it takes up 3,454 acres.