Beale Air Force Base

Beale Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation located in Yuba County, California, approximately 10 miles east of Marysville. Established in 1940 as Camp Beale, it was named after Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant and Brigadier General in the California Militia. The site transitioned to a United States Air Force installation on April 1, 1951, and was renamed Beale Air Force Base. The base covers nearly 23,000 acres of rolling hills in northern California.

Beale AFB is currently operational and is controlled by Air Combat Command (ACC). The host unit is the 9th Reconnaissance Wing (9 RW), which collects intelligence for national defense decisions. This wing operates the Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady" and RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft. The 940th Air Refueling Wing (940 ARW), an Air Force Reserve Command unit, is also stationed at Beale AFB, flying the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. Other significant units include the 548th Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Group, the California Air National Guard's 234th Intelligence Squadron, and the United States Space Force's 7th Space Warning Squadron, which operates a PAVE PAWS radar site for ballistic missile detection.

The base's history includes serving as a training post for the 13th Armored Division during World War II and housing a German POW camp. It later became a Strategic Air Command base in 1959, hosting B-52 Stratofortress bombers and HGM-25A Titan I intercontinental ballistic missiles. The SR-71 Blackbird supersonic reconnaissance aircraft arrived in 1966, operating alongside the U-2. The SR-71 was retired in 1990, but the U-2 mission continued, playing a role in operations like DESERT SHIELD/STORM.

Beale AFB features one concrete runway, 15/33, measuring 3,658 meters (12,001 feet). The base also maintains 38 Native American sites, 45 homestead sites, and 41 World War II sites, including remnants of the POW camp.