By Tom Ellison and Noah Fritzhand
From June through October 2025, the Military Responses to Climate Hazards (MiRCH) tracker documented 80 military deployments in 25 countries to address climate hazards. Most notably, these five months saw military deployments in response to the devastating impacts of tropical cyclones and torrential rain in transboundary regions across the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean, wildfires across North America and Europe, and severe storms and flooding in the United States. These incidents underscore the implications of preparedness and response cuts in the United States; the challenges of compounding, transnational disasters; and the intersection of disaster relief and conflict.
In the United States, floods, fires, storms, and droughts continued to harm populations and require military relief, highlighting the costs of the Trump Administration’s anti-climate cuts, the politicization of federal disaster relief, and other domestic military deployments. In July, intense rainfall from Tropical Storm Barry caused flooding in Kerry County, Texas, that killed at least 138 people, making it the 10th deadliest flash flood in US history. Troops from the Texas and Arkansas National Guard, Naval Construction Battalion, and Coast Guard (as well as first responders from Mexico and the Czech Republic) assisted civil authorities, amid reporting that preexisting obstacles and recent cuts to FEMA and the National Weather Service hindered preparedness and response. In remote northwest Alaska, high winds, flooding, and storm surge following October’s Typhoon Halong forced the National Guard and state authorities to evacuate more than 1,500 residents from the villages of Kipnuk and Kiwgillingok over two days, to shelters as far as Anchorage, marking one of the largest airlift evacuations in state history.
Simultaneously, from June to August, US National Guard forces from Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Oregon were called upon to support states with firefighting equipment, personnel, and logistics on the ground and in the air in the Western US, Alaska, and Hawaii. In Canada, 400 armed forces personnel deployed across Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ontario to fight fires, evacuating 6,770 people.
In late October, Hurricane Melissa, one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, slammed into the Caribbean. First making landfall in Jamaica and then moving on to Haiti, Cuba, and Bermuda, some scientists argue that Melissa falls into a new “Category 6” classification due to the extremely high wind speeds and catastrophic damage that significantly exceeded Category 5 benchmarks. Immediate estimates indicate that the damages could be $10 billion, with deaths at 75 and rising. Military personnel in Jamaica and Cuba were deployed across the islands to assist with search and rescue and recovery. The UK Royal Navy pre-positioned HMS Trent in the region, and in the immediate aftermath, the US Southern Command deployed a situational awareness team to assess the impact. Widespread AI-generated false content about the hurricane highlighted the risks of worsening mis- and disinformation during disasters.
Europe and the Mediterranean region also faced pressures from wildfires this summer. Armed forces in Greece, Turkey, and Albania were all deployed in their respective countries to support wildfire suppression efforts and evacuate at-risk populations. Additionally, the United States deployed the Kentucky National Guard, the US authority currently assigned to the NATO-led Kosovo Force Regional Command-East (KFOR RC-E), to assist in fighting a fire that was threatening the Dević Monastery, a Serbian Orthodox religious site built in 1434. The team mobilized seven aviation crews, comprising 10 pilots, 11 crew chiefs, and support personnel, and dropped 23,400 gallons of water on the fire over a total of 19 hours. Elsewhere, Mount Vesuvius was closed to visitors in Italy while a fire ripped through the national park, leading to a deployment of the Army to “support road control, access road construction, and water resupply via tanker trucks.” Western Europe also faced significant wildfires, with over 1,900 troops deployed in Spain to fight fires all across the country. Finally, France faced its largest wildfire in 75 years, which burned more than 42,000 acres in the Aude region.
Militaries across East Asia mobilized repeatedly in response to six typhoons in a span of less than three months, underscoring the challenge of compounding, successive hazards. Late July’s Typhoon Co May killed 25 in the Philippines, prompting the deployment of thousands of military and civilian personnel for relief and evacuations of 278,000, as well as US military-led humanitarian assistance. In mid-August, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense activated 30,000 troops and deployed search and rescue teams during Typhoon Podul. Weeks later, Viet Nam activated 300,000 armed forces personnel to assist with search and rescue and the evacuation of hundreds of thousands during Typhoon Kajicki. China also deployed more than 8,000 troops and militia in southern Hainan Province during Kajicki, following the activation of thousands of People’s Liberation Army and militia personnel in June and July to address extreme rainfall and flooding in the Beijing region and across southwestern provinces. In late September, Typhoon Ragasa prompted the armed forces in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Viet Nam to deploy again for evacuations, supply distribution, and rescue operations. By early October, Typhoons Bualoi in Viet Nam and Matmo in Thailand prompted additional military deployments.
Meanwhile, military and paramilitary responses to climate hazards in war zones and geopolitical hotspots across the world highlighted the intersection of disaster response and conflict dynamics. Amid Sudan’s civil war, in September, heavy rainfall caused a landslide that killed between 375 and 1,500 people in the Darfur village of Tarasin. The village is located in a small pocket of territory controlled by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, which oversees the delivery of aid. Since September, nearby fighting and advances by the Rapid Support Forces have prompted warnings of mass atrocities and a deepening humanitarian crisis. Amid ongoing fighting in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military supported relief for extreme rainfall and floods that killed 10 people around Odessa, a key port city less than 40 miles from Russian-controlled territory. And during tensions between India and Pakistan–including over transboundary water resources–the countries’ militaries deployed more than ten times in response to extreme precipitation and flooding.
With these updates, the MiRCH has documented 631 military deployments in 103 countries for climate-related hazards between June 2022 and October 2025–roughly averaging one every 2 days.