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In the steep terrain of southwestern China, there are numerous complex strata characterized by thin overburden layers and well-behaved underlying bedrock, yet excavation poses significant challenges. This situation is unfavorable for the construction of transmission towers' foundations. To address this issue, inclined anchor short-pile foundations have been proposed as foundations for transmission towers. These foundations not only reduce the depth and construction difficulty of excavation but also make full use of the load-bearing capacity of the bedrock. To investigate the influence of the anchor rods' layout on the uplift resistance characteristics of inclined anchor short-pile foundations, numerical models were established using FLAC3D. The effects of the anchor rods' position and the length of the free segment on the uplift resistance characteristics of inclined anchor short-pile foundations were explored. The results indicated that variations in the anchor rods' position and the length of the free segment had minimal impact on the uplift resistance characteristics of inclined anchor short-pile foundations. The pile head displacements of short piles with different anchor rod positions were similar under both loading conditions. Under pure uplift loads, the maximum displacement before failure was approximately 13 mm, while under combined uplift and horizontal loads, the maximum displacement before failure was around 15 mm. Placing the anchor rod too low increased the difficulty of construction, while positioning it too high resulted in a shorter embedment length of the anchor rod in the pile's body, leading to potential failure at the pile–anchor node. Therefore, it is recommended to position the anchor rod near the center of the short pile's body. As the length of the free segment of the anchor rod decreased, there was a slight reduction in the displacement under the same uplift loading conditions, with an overall difference of less than 5%. However, if full-length anchoring was adopted, the anchor rod was prone to tensile shear failure. Compared with short-pile foundations of the same size, inclined anchor short-pile foundations demonstrated enhanced ultimate bearing capacity under uplift and combined uplift and horizontal loading. The improvement was more significant when horizontal loads were present. Under horizontal loading, the ultimate uplift bearing capacity of inclined anchor short-pile foundations decreased by only 14%, whereas that of single-pile foundations decreased by 24%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]