President Donald Trump authorized more airstrikes in the first five months of his second term than President Joe Biden did during his four years in office, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project reported on Wednesday.
According to ACLED President Clionadh Raleigh, “In just five months, Trump has overseen nearly as many US airstrikes (529) as were recorded across the entire four years of the previous administration (555).”
“The US military is moving faster, hitting harder, and doing so with fewer constraints. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now Iran are all familiar terrain, but this isn’t about geography; it’s about frequency,” he added.
The majority of military strikes were carried out against Yemen. Airwars reports that at least 224 Yemeni civilians were killed during Operation Rough Rider, which began on March 15 and ended on May 6. That figure is only slightly less than the 258 civilians directly killed by US military action in the country since 2002. Furthermore, Trump is responsible for the two most lethal civilian harm incidents in the war’s history. His strikes on the Ras Isa Port on April 17 killed 84 civilians and injured 150, while his strikes on the migrant detention center at the Saada City Remand Prison on April 28 killed 68 civilians and injured 47. Despite Trump’s attacks on Yemen, the Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, have continued to fire rockets at Israel.
Trump has also ordered attacks on Iran, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria. According to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran, 1,190 Iranians, including 436 civilians, were killed during the US-backed Israeli war on the Islamic Republic last month. In late May, US Central Command supported a series of military operations against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. And Trump, who has bombed Somalia at least 49 times in 2025, is on track to break his own record for total number of US airstrikes against the country in a single year.
During his second inaugural address, Trump vowed to be a “peacemaker and a unifier.” He also said, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
