Sexual assaults reported by deployed troops doubled last year, according to Pentagon officials, while the total number of reports across the entire military fell slightly, according to newly released Department of Defense statistics.

Among U.S. troops deployed to specific countries, those in Poland reported twice as many assaults as those in any other nation, according to the Pentagon’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, which was released Friday with data from fiscal year 2025.

Along with the small overall drop and the large rise in deployed incidents, the report included estimations from a workplace survey that only about one-third of actual sexual assault incidents are reflected in official DOD reports.

Across the Department of Defense, officials recorded 7,998 reports of sexual assault involving military members, a 2% decline from the year before. 

Deployed troops reported 246 cases of sexual assault, up from 120 in 2024. The 2025 number nearly matches the 247 reported in 2023, which was the largest number of reported assaults among deployed troops in the last decade, according to the report.

Among reported assaults in 2025, more than a quarter came from units deployed to Poland, where various reports say the U.S. has about 10,000 deployed service members. U.S. troops have been routinely deployed to Poland since 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine and as part of ongoing NATO rotations in Eastern Europe. Troops in Poland reported 73 sexual assaults, more than double the number of attacks reported in the next-most frequent locations, Kuwait (30) and Qatar (24).

Most deployed assaults involve service members

It was the third year in a row that troops in Poland reported the most assaults, along with 2023 and 2024, according to previous Pentagon reports.

One advocate said her organization has heard from four women from Fort Hood, Texas-based units who said they were assaulted by a fellow servicemember while deployed to Poland. 

“Now that I see the report, it makes sense,” said Shannon Hough, founder of Shield of Sisters, a nonprofit that counsels service members dealing with military sexual trauma. “It’s all been unit-on-unit, service member against service member. None of it was outside, like they went off duty, and [were attacked by] a civilian,” she said. “That’s pretty common during deployments. It’s usually service member on service member, or contractor, or all military affiliated, whereas when you’re back here or at another duty station, it could be civilian-related.”

According to the Pentagon report, service members alleged that other troops were the perpetrators in more than half of the unrestricted sexual assault reports last year. Restricted reports of sexual assault are confidential and therefore had less data available to break down. Unrestricted reports made up 63% of all reports. 

Hough said reporting assaults while deployed comes with many hurdles.

“When we have units deployed, they’re away from their families, they’re away from their significant others, so there’s a higher number of assaults because they don’t have the same outlets and the same controls as they do back home,” Hough said. “There’s just not as many resources available, so coming forward is harder, and you don’t want to be one of the people who ‘cause problems.’ You don’t want to be sent home because it ruins your career.”

Though total reported assaults dropped slightly in 2025, Pentagon officials noted that at least one survey indicates that assaults remain highly “underreported.”

The fiscal year 2025 Workplace Experiences Survey surveyed just over 100,000 active duty troops on their experiences with workplace issues, including sexual assault. From that survey, researchers estimated that about 20,500 troops were likely to have “[experienced] unwanted sexual contact,” in 2025 — a number three times higher than those who actually reported an assault, according to DOD analysis.

That gap, though, was an improvement on previous years. In 2021, the same type of DOD analysis concluded that 35,900 troops were affected — five times the number of troops who made an official report that year.

“That tells me there’s a lot of people that are scared that don’t believe in the system. They don’t want to cause any problems, don’t want to bring attention to themselves, don’t believe that they’ll be believed,” Hough said. “This is so sad. It just tells me that people aren’t coming forward. They’re just they don’t go into the system and don’t want to go through all of it because it is a lot.”

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