troopdata 1.0.4

• Fixes error where two 2008 reports were included leading to inflated values for 2008.
• Changes Eritrea country code to Ethiopia to reflect corresponding polity in older reports.
• Change deployment values assigned to Hong Kong after 1997 to China.
• Improved documentation to better explain changes in rebuilt data starting with version 1.0.0 and where discrepancies might arise between the updated data and Kane’s original collection.

troopdata 1.0.3

• Added most recent deployment data through December 2024.
• Fixes error where some 2008 values were double counted. Germany for example.
• Adjusts count for some states like Germany and UK to better reflect troop counts assigned to those states between 2001 and 2011. This adjustment relies on the baseline data from the DMDC reports for a select group of countries and removes the added values the DMDC reports show as affiliated with those countries that are on deployment to other countries as a part of OIF or OEF operations.
• Adds the troops_all variable to reflect the sum of all active duty, guard, and reserve, personnel assigned to host country and removes some guard and reserve personnel that were mistakenly included in the overall total in the troops_ad variable, which should just reflect active duty personnel.
• Fixed some errors where some countries were appearing twice in the data. These were primarily countries with small deployments.
• Added tests to check for duplicate entries in the data.

troopdata 1.0.2

• Fixes error in package build. Not related to data accuracy.

troopdata 1.0.1

• Fixed error in Iraq troop deployment values for 2006 and 2007. The estimated values for the entire year were being used as quarterly values and summed up to create incorrect annual values.

troopdata 1.0.0

• Major rebuild of the troopdata package!
• Complete rebuild of the get_troopdata() function to allow for more flexible data retrieval. The new data are based on a fresh scraping of the DMDC reports from 1950 through 2024.
• Deployment data updated through 2024.
• Branch data now available from 1950 through 2024.
• Quarterly report values can be retrieved from 2008 through 2024.
• National Guard and Reserve deployment data now available from 2008 through 2024.
• Civilian assignment data now available from 2008 through 2024.
• More flexible host search field. Search by Correlates of War country code, ISO3C country code, country name, or region.
• Now includes additional deployment data on territories not included in the original deployment data (e.g. Antarctica).
• Users can now use the get_troopdata() function to retrieve the original DMDC reports on which the aggregate data is based.
• Fixes error when selecting multiple countries in base and build data functions.

troopdata 0.1.5

• Addresses a coding error producing false 0 values for some earlier deployments.

troopdata 0.1.4 Data Update

• September 2021 Counts for Total Troops, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps added

• Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan include estimated totals from news reports due to DMDC not providing estimates.

• Afghanistan estimated at 0 for all categories due to withdrawal finishing on August 31st.

• Syria estimated at 900, no estimates for branches: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/27/troops-to-stay-in-syria-biden-500848

• Iraq estimated at 2500, no estimates for branches: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/us/troops-deploy-iraq.html

  • ccode 1012 Taiwan deleted for 2008-2020
  • ccode 713 Taiwan now properly holds troop counts for 2008-2021
  • Côte d’Ivoire country name reformatted to hopefully cause fewer issues
  • São Tomé and Príncipe name reformatted to hopefully cause fewer issues

• Updated numbers:

• British Virigin Islands 2016

• Uruguay 2014-2016, 2020

• Uzbekistan 2014-2016, 2020

• Venezuela 2015-2017

• Vietnam 2012, 2014-2017, 2020

• US Virgin Islands 2012-2017, 2020

• Wake Island 2011-2017, 2020

• Yemen 2009, 2011-2017, 2019-2020

• Zambia 2009, 2012-2017, 2019-2020

• Zimbabwe 2009, 2011-2017, 2019-2020

• Unknown 2009, 2011-2020

• United States counts updated for Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, 2006-2021

• United States total no longer counts Coast Guard deployments for 2008-2020 to be consistent with other countries

• Note: We plan to include Coast Guard counts for all countries from 2008-2020 in a future update and a second total count

troopdata 0.1.4

• Introduces get_builddata() function which returns a data frame containing location-year U.S. military construction spending in thousands of current US dollars.
• Adds option to generate regional sums of military personnel by setting host = “region” when calling get_troopdata() function.
• Fixed multiple errors with get_troopdata():

  • 2014 UK values were missing from data.

  • Fixes error with get_troopdata() Kuwait 2006 troop values showing up as 0. Replaced with estimate derived from supplementary sources. See notes below.

  • Provides updated estimated for Iraq (2006, 2007), Kuwait (2006, 2007), and Syria (2018, 2019, 2020)

  • Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria data for 2018-2020 were estimated from reports and we continue to update those numbers based on information we can get. Just Security has engaged in a legal process and sued the DOD to get precise counts of troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, but the DOD has obfuscated the total counts by classifying the majority of deployments as temporary. Read through the whole saga here: https://www.justsecurity.org/75124/just-security-obtains-overseas-troop-counts-that-the-pentagon-concealed-from-the-public/. Thanks to Thomas Campbell at Boise State for pointing out this data. To reflect new public data, we have updated the estimates as follows:

  • Changes:

    • Afghanistan 2020: Updated to 8600 from 4500.

    • Afghanistan 2019: Updated to 13000 from 14500

    • Syria 2018: Updated to 1700 from 2000

    • Syria 2019: Updated to 1000 from 400

    • Syria 2020: Updated to 900 from 600

    • Kuwait 2006 and 2007 numbers didn’t make sense as it goes from 42600 troops in 2005 to 0 for two years and then back up to 42285 in 2008. For 2006 and 2007, these numbers were rolled into a total “Operation Iraqi Freedom” count that included all nearby countries. We have reverse-engineered this a bit and have new numbers for Kuwait. Kuwait 2006 updated to 44,400 from 0. We got this number from 185,500 total OIF and subtracting the average from 2006 reported in the above document. Kuwait 2007 updated to 48500 from 0.

    • Iraq 2006: Updated to 141100 from 185500, using 2006 average from here: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf

    • Iraq 2007: Updated to 170000 from 218500, source for the first number is: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-pullout/timeline-invasion-surge-withdrawal-u-s-forces-in-iraq-idUSTRE7BE0EL20111215

    • Iraq 2006 and 2007: Individual force counts changed to NA.

These numbers continue to be estimates in a few cases, so we will continue to update these numbers as we get more reliable figures.

troopdata 0.1.3

• Fixed error where Kane data classifies troops as being present in Vietnam during the Vietnam War but COW recognizes South Vietnam as a separate country.
• Fixed error where get_troopdata() function was always returning branch data.

troopdata 0.1.2

• Modified version number down to better adhere to R package best practices.
• Improved documentation for package and functions.

troopdata 1.1.0

troopdata 1.0.0

• troopdata version 1.0.0 release!
• New package providing access to US military deployment and overseas basing data.
• get_troopdata() returns a data frame of country-year observations with options to return total troop deployment values or service branch-specific deployment values.
• get_basedata() returns a data frame containing David Vine’s US basing data with options to return site-specific data or country-level base count data.
• Minor bug fixes.

troopdata 0.0.0.9000

• Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.