US Troops in Bahrain: How Many, and Where Is the Fifth Fleet?

The current number is not public. The last firm figures are from before the war: the Congressional Research Service counted more than 8,000 US military personnel and civilian employees assigned to the base as of 2023, and about 8,300 service members and their families lived there before the war.

Bahrain was the only country in the US Central Command region where American military families lived with their sailors. The Pentagon estimated the cost of keeping US personnel there at $774.3 million for fiscal 2025.

That picture changed in the last days of February. On February 26, 2026, US officials said the Navy had reduced staff at the Fifth Fleet headquarters to “mission critical” levels ahead of possible strikes on Iran. On February 28, after the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Naval Forces Central Command told its people that the Juffair district around the base was no longer assessed as safe and moved them to hotels elsewhere. On March 2 the military and the State Department ordered dependents to leave the country; about 1,300 left, most of them leaving their belongings behind.

Naval Support Activity Bahrain is a US Navy base in the Juffair district of Manama, on the northeast coast of the island, and it is the home of both US Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet. Before the war it was the Navy’s main supply and repair hub in the Middle East.

The fleet’s area stretches from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz to the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea. The base also hosts the Combined Maritime Forces, a naval partnership formed in 2001 that brings together 47 countries, and before the war more than 100 separate US commands worked from it. Warships, minesweepers and Coast Guard patrol boats used the nearby Mina Salman port.

The US Navy has kept a command in Bahrain since 1948, longer than anywhere else in the Gulf. It began as a small Middle East Force that worked from British facilities on the island, and it stayed after Britain left in 1971 under an agreement signed that year.

The modern base rests on three later steps. A defense cooperation agreement signed on October 28, 1991, after the Gulf War, gave US forces access and basing rights; it was renewed in 2017 for 15 years. The Fifth Fleet, inactive since 1947, was re-formed in Manama in 1995. In March 2002, President George W. Bush named Bahrain a major non-NATO ally.

In September 2023 the two governments signed the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement, under which each treats outside aggression against the other as “a matter of grave concern” and commits to work out defense responses. Britain joined it in December 2024. In December 2025 Bahrain and US Central Command opened a combined air defense command post at Ras al Bar Camp.

Yes. Iran struck Naval Support Activity Bahrain with missiles and drones on February 28, 2026, the first day of the war, and it was targeted again several times through June. No American deaths there were reported in the first attack. Bahrain’s Defense Force said it shot down 45 missiles and nine drones that day.

The damage was heavy. The headquarters building of the Fifth Fleet, a barracks, warehouses and communications towers were all hit. A Congressional Research Service update on September 23 put the cost of the damage at no less than $400 million. Bahrain sits less than 300 kilometers from Iran’s southern coast, well within range of Iran’s missiles and drones.

Washington took months to say how bad it was. The acting Navy secretary, Hung Cao, said in an interview published on September 9 that Iranian forces “blew the hell out of” the base, and that a task force was studying whether to repair it.

For now the Navy has left the base, though not the alliance with Bahrain. On August 31, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Daryl Caudle, told sailors at a town hall: “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon.”

The Navy has moved its supply hub to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from the Gulf, and by August the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had gone more than seven months without an official port call. The fleet’s commander, Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, told Navy families the service was “making it up as we go.” The Pentagon has not said where the Fifth Fleet headquarters now works from. Its ships enforce the naval blockade of Iran from sea.

Families are not going back either. A Pentagon memo dated August 27 ended the ordered departure from Bahrain and gave families until November 30 to move off temporary evacuation pay. On October 30, 30 Democratic members of Congress wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking, by November 13, how the damage has affected operations, what it cost and whether the Pentagon intends to rebuild the base.

Bahrain was the Navy’s home in the Gulf, while the air war is run from elsewhere. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command and the air operations center, as our explainer Al Udeid Air Base: What It Is and Why Iran Targets It shows. Saudi Arabia had about 2,700 US troops when the war began, mostly at Prince Sultan Air Base, as set out in US Troops in Saudi Arabia: How Many, and Where?

What made Bahrain different was its families, its port and its permanence. It was the one Gulf base built for a fleet to live at, not only to fly from.