Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst

Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst is a United States military installation located 18 miles southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. It is the only tri-service base in the Department of Defense, spanning 42,000 acres within Burlington and Ocean counties. The base was established on October 1, 2009, by merging McGuire Air Force Base, Fort Dix, and Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst in accordance with 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommendations.

The facility’s constituent parts have separate histories: the Lakehurst site originated as a munitions-testing area in 1916 and became a naval air station in 1921; the Dix site was established in 1917 as Camp Dix for soldier mobilization; and the McGuire site began as Fort Dix Army Air Force Base in 1941, reopening as McGuire Air Force Base in 1948.

The U.S. Air Force operates the base under Air Mobility Command, with the 87th Air Base Wing serving as the host organization. Resident units include the 305th Air Mobility Wing, the 621st Contingency Response Wing, and the 514th Air Mobility Wing of the Air Force Reserve Command. The New Jersey Air National Guard is represented by the 108th Wing. Army operations are managed through Army Support Activity Dix, which mobilizes and trains Army Reserve and National Guard personnel. Naval operations are conducted through Naval Support Activity Lakehurst. Other resident units include Marine Aircraft Group 49, the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center, and various reserve aviation and civil affairs battalions.

The base manages 3,933 facilities and hosts squadrons of C-17 Globemaster III and KC-46 Pegasus aircraft. Other airframes include the C-32B and Marine Corps helicopters such as the CH-53E Super Stallion. Infrastructure at Lakehurst includes full-scale shipboard representative test facilities for naval aviation, used for the development of Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment, including the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear.