Overview
- Pentagon policy officials, the Joint Staff and CENTCOM are conducting a policy-level review to decide whether to reduce or restructure the roughly 40,000-troop footprint across nearly 20 sites from Jordan to Oman.
- The review follows a campaign from February through June 2026 in which Iranian missiles and drones damaged scores to hundreds of U.S. facilities and caused U.S. casualties, exposing the risks of concentrated, static bases.
- Options under active consideration include spreading forces across smaller, less conspicuous sites, moving some capabilities farther west (including Israel, Jordan and Saudi Red Sea locations), and hardening command-and-control nodes, including underground facilities.
- Officials have signaled they may not rebuild some attacked bases to their pre-war form, a choice that would save reconstruction costs but raise logistics, response-time and allied-security trade-offs for Gulf partners.
- The review carries big fiscal and strategic consequences: the Pentagon estimates the conflict's direct costs near $37.5 billion through September and rebuilding could add billions, while Gulf states may need to boost their own defenses or seek new security partners.