- 7 weeks ago
Using satellite imagery and archive footage, we mapped out America’s global military footprint.
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00:00After the U.S. dropped its so-called bunker buster bombs on Iran in June 2025, an American base in
00:10Qatar suddenly found itself in the crosshairs. These satellite images show how aircraft stationed
00:17here left the base just days before the U.S. strike, perhaps in anticipation of an Iranian
00:23counter-strike. The strike did come. The Americans said all Iranian missiles were intercepted.
00:33But analysis by the Associated Press shows damage to this dome housing secure U.S. communications
00:38equipment. Al-Qudade Air Base is just one of America's vast network of more than 750 military
00:46outposts scattered across 80 countries and territories. But why do these bases exist and
00:52are they worth it? We spoke to David Vine, who's spent the last 25 years tracking America's
01:00overseas military bases and counting the cost.
01:02David Vine, U.S.: Are they making us safer, as many people have long claimed? Might they
01:07be actually undermining U.S. national security?
01:10Using satellite imagery, we analysed the evolution of America's military bases abroad, from the
01:16frozen to the tropical, from the abandoned to the expanding. And we visited one of the biggest.
01:26I'm here at U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria in Germany. At 92 square miles, it's actually the largest
01:33U.S. Army training area outside of the U.S.
01:36U.S., viewed from above America's sprawling military outposts, even those pixelated on Google Earth,
01:42come into sharp focus.
01:46The United States has military bases on every continent, apart from Antarctica.
01:56The U.K. has the second largest network of overseas military sites, with a permanent presence
02:01in more than 100 locations worldwide. Russia, France and Turkey each operate a small number,
02:07while China has one official foreign military base.
02:10The United States has about 75 to 85 percent of the world's foreign military bases.
02:18U.S. military bases vary in size. Some are small, like this American drone facility at
02:25Chebele in Djibouti. Uncrewed aircraft here have been well-positioned for missions in Somalia,
02:31and Yemen, as well as in the fight against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.
02:37In this Google Earth image, you can make out what appear to be MQ-9 Reaper drones.
02:44Other bases, like the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, are the size of large towns.
02:50The 18,000 Americans living here enjoy access to schools, a softball complex, a dive shop,
02:56and an 18-hole golf course. Each base is, or at least was, built for a very specific reason.
03:03Take a look at America's northernmost military base at Patufik in Greenland. It was built
03:10in 1951 as a defence against airborne threats from the Soviet Union.
03:17About 150 miles northeast of Patufik Space Base is, or was, Camp Century.
03:23In 1959, the U.S. built a network of tunnels just beneath the ice surface,
03:28under the cover of a scientific research station.
03:31Over the decades, accumulating snow and ice have buried the tunnels to a depth of around 30 meters.
03:37In the end, Camp Century couldn't survive a mix of engineering failures, moving ice,
03:43and political pushback from Denmark, which oversees the island's defence and security.
03:48In 1967, as quickly and quietly as it was built, the base was abandoned.
03:54In 2024, NASA snapped this radar image, revealing the ghostly imprint of the city under the ice.
04:03There are still concerns about radioactive waste buried there.
04:07The U.S. is clinging to its outpost in Patufik, which it uses to monitor military satellites.
04:13But there's more to it than that.
04:15In 2025, the Trump administration talked of buying, even invading, Greenland.
04:21And I think we're going to get it. One way or the other, we're going to get it.
04:26Greenlanders and their former colonial rulers, the Danish, insisted Greenland was not for sale.
04:32Patufik isn't the only U.S. base hidden away in distant corners of the map.
04:38In fact, being remote is often very deliberate.
04:41That makes them hard to see for many people in a host country or others around the world.
04:47Although, of course, they would be visible from above.
04:51This 2.5 square mile outpost is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
04:55Wake Island is about 2,400 miles from Hawaii, roughly the distance from New York to San Francisco.
05:02The nearest U.S. military base is on the island of Guam, about 1,500 miles to the west.
05:08About 100 soldiers and defence contractors are based here at any given time.
05:14The U.S. first took control of Wake Island in 1899, but it didn't build a military base there until 1941,
05:21as war with Japan became likely.
05:24Wake Island devastated by the daring raid, a story to remember on Navy days.
05:30The Marshall Islands have disputed U.S. ownership for decades, arguing that the land historically belonged to them.
05:38The U.S. sees Wake Island as a crucial mid-Pacific hub,
05:43handling hundreds of military and cargo landings every year since the 1970s.
05:48Of course, resupplying, staffing and running these far-flung outposts comes at a huge expense.
05:54My best estimate is that U.S. taxpayers are paying around $80 billion a year
06:00to maintain U.S. bases on other countries' soil.
06:04And $80 billion is a larger budget than almost any other government agency.
06:10As we can see with Patufik and Wake Island, these outposts are the legacies of past wars.
06:16In fact, you can look back as far as America's founding with bases created by a newly formed United States
06:22as it began expanding westward.
06:25Bases on Native American people's lands helped enable the expansion of the United States
06:31across the North American continent.
06:34Many of these bases are still in place to this day.
06:37In the late 1800s, the U.S. began looking further afield.
06:41Starting in the Pacific and Caribbean, it annexed Hawaii and took control of islands
06:46such as Guam and Puerto Rico.
06:49During World War I, the U.S. ramped up its military presence overseas
06:53and by the end of World War II, it had built hundreds of military installations.
06:58The U.S. military, during World War II, built more bases than any country, people or empire in world history.
07:05After the Second World War, President Harry Truman pledged that the U.S. would step in
07:09to help protect any democratic nation that was under threat.
07:13I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are
07:20resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.
07:27Permanent infrastructure of U.S. military bases abroad remained very much in place
07:33and actually grew over time in the early days of the Cold War amid the U.S. and Allied war in Korea.
07:42And the numbers of bases fluctuated.
07:44They increased again during the U.S.-led war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and Southeast Asia.
07:50During the Cold War, Germany marked the dividing line between the Soviet Union
07:54and its satellite states and Western Europe.
07:58And eight decades after World War II, it still has more U.S. military bases than any other nation.
08:07This is United States Army garrison, Bavaria.
08:10The headquarters at Grafenwohr was a prison camp during World War I
08:14and then a training facility for the Nazi war machine during World War II.
08:21Today, it's the largest U.S. Army training area outside America.
08:27Satellite images of the base show orderly rows of barracks, training fields and tank trails.
08:33Take a look at this satellite image of the nearby Hohenfels training area.
08:37These are lines of trenches.
08:40In this footage, soldiers from 2nd Cavalry Regiment are conducting an exercise
08:45to clear the trenches of enemy fighters with the help of drones.
08:50Once we clear out the trench, we're going to go set up a hasty defence position.
08:57Once we're done with the defence for that night, we're going to be setting up an ambush for the next day.
09:02Clear!
09:05Not far away, soldiers are carrying out another drill.
09:08This time, U.S. Army soldiers are launching an assault out in the open,
09:13using striker vehicles, drones and machine guns firing blank rounds.
09:18Back at HQ, you'll spot more than just military activity.
09:25There are schools, sports fields and shopping malls catering to the service personnel
09:30and their families who live and work here.
09:34There are 16,000 family members of service members, spouses and children.
09:40And so there's a lot of schools.
09:41There's eight total schools on U.S. Army Garrison, Bavaria.
09:45Many U.S. bases abroad are like little America's, and that's by design.
09:51So many things that make you feel like you're at home.
09:53I mean, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, Burger King, Subway, on and on.
09:58There's football fields, gyms with CrossFit equipment.
10:02They definitely go out of their way to make the soldiers living and working here feel like they're at home.
10:07We are Americans.
10:08We do bring our culture, and it's OK to display our culture.
10:12The U.S.'s longstanding presence in Western Europe now has a new sense of urgency,
10:17the war in Ukraine.
10:20If we go on an hour west from here, we're going into the Czech Republic.
10:24If we continue driving, in about 18 hours, we're in Kyiv.
10:28So we are already here.
10:30After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense deployed
10:4020,000 more troops across Europe, bringing the total in the region to more than 100,000.
10:47This is one of the largest deployments of U.S. troops in Europe since the end of the Cold War.
10:52But the U.S. build-up really began in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea.
10:59That year, units from all branches began rotating deployments in the Baltic states and Poland.
11:05Since 2014, the U.S. also has an armoured battalion in Lithuania,
11:09which borders Belarus and Russia's Karl Leningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea.
11:15As tensions with Russia grew, U.S. forces in Lithuania moved into Camp Herkus,
11:20less than 10 miles from the border with Belarus.
11:24And in Poznan, in Poland, U.S. soldiers have been garrisoned permanently as of 2023.
11:30Poland is also home to the U.S. military's newest base in Europe at Regikovo.
11:37The base is obscured on Google Earth, but visible on these satellite images from Planet Labs.
11:43U.S. Army engineers broke ground at the site in 2016,
11:47although it didn't become operational until late 2024.
11:51The base is equipped with interceptor missiles, as well as a sophisticated radar system
11:55that can track missiles from hostile states.
11:59While the U.S. expands its military presence in Europe,
12:02NATO and the American administration are showing signs
12:05that European allies shouldn't rely on U.S. protection forever.
12:09America's allies have broad shoulders, and Europe and Canada will do more for our shared security.
12:17As conflicts and threats evolve, static bases can become obsolete.
12:22That's where America's floating armies come in.
12:25In March 2025, the U.S. Navy launched its largest ever Middle East operation under Trump,
12:31deploying F.A. 18 Super Hornet fighters from the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman,
12:37and firing Tomahawk missiles from the U.S.S. Gettysburg cruiser
12:42to strike Houthi targets in Yemen.
12:47The U.S.S. Carl Vinson, a floating air base with a crew of 5,000,
12:51was also in the region to deter escalation and support operations amid rising Israel-Iran tensions.
12:59And just like the bases on land,
13:02America has more aircraft carriers than any other nation.
13:06But not everything in the U.S. arsenal is visible on the surface.
13:10In June 2025, the USS Georgia, a nuclear-powered Ohio-class submarine,
13:15launched Tomahawk missiles at Iranian nuclear targets from the Gulf of Oman.
13:20In the past 25 years,
13:23we've seen a major buildup of U.S. military bases in the greater Middle East,
13:29as part of the so-called War on Terror.
13:31And while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended,
13:36the U.S. military presence in the region has, for the most part, remained in place.
13:42But the story of U.S. bases is not only one of expansion.
13:47Zoom in on Afghanistan.
13:50Bagram Airfield, around 35 miles from Kabul,
13:54was seized by British and American forces during their invasion in 2001.
13:59Early satellite images from that period show a modest facility with a single runway.
14:04Over the next decade, it rapidly grew into a full-scale military base.
14:09Satellite images from May 2021 show what appeared to be Chinook helicopters,
14:14F-16 fighter jets and C-17 transport aircraft on the base.
14:19But two months later, soon after America's planned withdrawal,
14:23the only thing left were the silhouettes of jets painted onto the tarmac.
14:27Later that year, a lightning advance by the Taliban across the country
14:31saw a panicked withdrawal from the international airport in Kabul.
14:35In these satellite images from August 2021, you can see thousands of people
14:39massed at the gates of the airport, crowding around planes on the tarmac
14:44and surging onto the runway in a desperate attempt to secure a flight out of the country.
14:49The crowded airport became a target for suicide bombers.
14:52An attack on August the 26th killed more than 180 people,
14:56including 13 U.S. military personnel.
14:59This, unsurprisingly, looks like the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan,
15:04where they left behind bases and weaponry and materiel.
15:07It's more expensive to ship it home or take it with them or more cumbersome, more difficult.
15:13In its hasty departure, the U.S. left behind $7 billion of military equipment,
15:18including aircraft, trucks and heavy armoured vehicles, all quickly seized by the Taliban.
15:23In some ways it's an old imperial story where empires wage wars and then eventually people kick them out.
15:32Footage from August the 14th, 2024 shows Taliban forces marking the third anniversary of their takeover
15:39with a military parade at Bagram Air Base.
15:42In this satellite image taken the day before, you can just make out the same red canopy.
15:51In recent years, much of America's focus has shifted east to the threat it senses from China.
15:57The South China Sea has become one of the most contested regions in the world.
16:01China, the Philippines and Vietnam have come close to conflict here,
16:05building artificial islands and turning them into military outposts,
16:09complete with runways, radar systems and missile sites.
16:13Zoom out a little and you'll also see a growing U.S. footprint.
16:17Bases in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and training areas in Australia.
16:22These bases are quite clearly designed to contain the military,
16:28but really mostly economic and political rise of China that we've seen over the past couple decades or more.
16:35I often encourage people to think about how we U.S. citizens, for example,
16:41would feel if China were to build even a single base anywhere near the borders of the United States.
16:48China does not have any bases anywhere close to the United States.
16:53Yet in 2023, the U.S. secured access to four new strategic military sites in the Philippines,
16:59including naval base Camilo Ocias and Balabac Island.
17:03And further out in the Pacific, the U.S. is reviving some old military sites after decades of neglect.
17:09This is the island of Tinian, part of the Northern Mariana Islands.
17:13During the Second World War, the island was used as a staging post for U.S. attacks on Japan.
17:18I've been to Tinian and was able to ride up to this former airfield where the first atomic weapon to be used was loaded
17:28and then took off from this runway and was dropped on Hiroshima.
17:34Take a look at this image from 2020 and you can barely make out the runway.
17:39But as you can see in this image from 2025, recent U.S. military investment has reshaped Tinian's landscape
17:47with a new 8,600-foot runway, aircraft parking aprons and fuel storage facilities.
17:54This $800 million rebuild aims to strengthen the U.S. military presence across the Indo-Pacific region.
18:03Over 5,000 miles away, the remote island of Diego Garcia has also seen America flex its military muscle.
18:11In April 2025, the U.S. deployed at least six stealth bombers here as a show of force ahead of nuclear talks with Iran.
18:19The U.S. military has occupied the base since the late 1960s in a $14 million secret deal with the British government.
18:27In exchange for the British government doing the dirty work of getting rid of the local indigenous Chagosian people
18:35who U.S. government officials wanted gone.
18:38In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the entire indigenous Chagosian population was forcibly deported 1,200 miles away
18:47to clear the island for the U.S. military base.
18:59Over time, the base grew into a key launch point for U.S. operations against Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
19:05All the major wars in the greater Middle East have involved the use of the base on Diego Garcia, including the first and second Gulf Wars against Iraq.
19:15And this strategy continues to play out today.
19:18On March 15, 2025, the U.S. conducted airstrikes against Houthi targets from here.
19:24These images, provided by Planet Labs, show the aftermath of a U.S. strike on Ras Issa fuel port in Yemen.
19:31After years of negotiations about the future of Diego Garcia, the U.K. struck a deal to lease the island for another 99 years.
19:39As we've long suspected, that the U.S. military intends to stay on Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean for decades to come.
19:55America's overseas bases aren't just expensive, they're also harmful to the environment.
20:01Fuels, oils, lubricants, other things that are generally not good for the environment.
20:07And when a U.S. military base closes, the U.S. military, unfortunately, outside the United States, has had a pretty terrible track record
20:17when it comes to cleaning up the environmental damage that U.S. bases have caused.
20:23Frequently, it's left to the host nation to clean up that environmental damage.
20:29In many places, groundwater contamination, soil pollution and hazardous waste remain for decades.
20:36By 2024, the Pentagon said it had cut its emissions to less than half its peak in 1990.
20:42But they were still on a par with the emissions of entire mid-sized European countries.
20:48There are 120 U.S. bases scattered across Japan.
20:5270% of them are in Okinawa.
20:55The local communities here have long protested contamination from toxic chemicals linked to the facilities.
21:08The U.S. military presence in Guam has left a legacy of environmental damage, including contamination of soil and groundwater from hazardous waste and fuel spills.
21:17This footage shows soldiers detonating explosives, sending clouds of smoke into the air at Anderson Air Force Base.
21:26Beyond the environmental damage, these bases often dominate the landscape, providing little benefit to the local population.
21:32Often they are occupying quite expensive real estate in beautiful places like Okinawa, a beautiful tropical island or Guam.
21:41Also in places in Germany where other economic activities could be undertaken that would benefit a local economy.
21:51But many nations continue to rely on the Americans deployed on their doorstep.
21:56For example, the U.S. base at Camp Humphreys in South Korea, which people here see as a useful deterrent to aggression from the north.
22:04Future warfare will require different types of overseas bases.
22:10The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that large static bases are vulnerable, in particular to drone attacks.
22:16More recently established American military outposts abroad, like drone bases, have a smaller footprint and they're harder to identify.
22:28There are other ways that U.S. military bases abroad conceal their presence.
22:33The most prominent of which is locating a U.S. military base within a host nation base,
22:40which makes it hard to distinguish what is a U.S. base, what is a foreign base.
22:45Take this air base in Somalia.
22:48It's marked on the map as the Bale Dogal Air Base, run by the Somali National Army.
22:53But it also houses what the U.S. military calls a cooperative security location,
22:58also known as a lily pad, a small covert military installation.
23:03These are bases that are occupied typically by as few as a few dozen or a couple hundred military personnel troops.
23:10And they have very few facilities other than basic living facilities.
23:15Lily pad bases are frequently located in places where a host nation doesn't want people to know that there is a base.
23:25The presence of the U.S. military in Bale Dogal isn't secret, but the kinds of military activity it's running from the base certainly seem to be.
23:33A 2017 satellite image appears to show a U.S. spy plane, a small U-28A fixed-wing aircraft at the base.
23:41Similar covert sites are active across Africa and the U.S. continues to build more around the world.
23:50Trump has spoken of ending wars and of reducing America's overseas military footprint.
23:56But as we saw with the bombing of the nuclear sites in Iran, it's clear that nothing is off the table.
24:03Right now it's very difficult to know what will happen if President Trump was to embrace the kind of old school colonialism that he has certainly expressed some affinity for.
24:14We could very much see new U.S. bases in places like Greenland, the Panama Canal Zone, even Gaza.
24:21I think we're at a major fork in the road. I think there's a major choice facing the United States.
24:28Whether the United States will continue to embrace what I see as a long, outdated military strategy of encircling the globe with military bases.
24:37Or we'll pursue a different path, building up its diplomatic presence around the world.
24:51In the United States, it's the United States to be able to imagine the state of the U.S. investigation
24:56To the United States.
25:14The United States.
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