Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (Base Naval de la Bahía de Guantánamo)

Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB, GTMO) is a United States Navy installation on Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba, occupying 45 square miles (117 km2) of land and water held under a 1903 lease that grants the United States sole jurisdiction. It falls under Navy Region Southeast. The station is divided by the bay into Leeward Point, which holds the airfield, and Windward Point, which holds most base activity; coves and peninsulas along the bay shoreline provide mooring areas. Base population is about 6,100, including military personnel, civilian employees, contractors and dependents.

Resident commands include the naval station headquarters, Joint Task Force Guantanamo, a Marine Corps Security Force Company, Navy Security Forces, a Seabee detachment, Naval Hospital Guantanamo Bay, a detachment of Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic, Navy Supply, and the AFN Guantanamo Bay broadcast unit. The U.S. Coast Guard maintains both a Maritime Security Detachment and an Aviation Detachment on the station. No combatants are homeported; assigned craft comprise the ferry boats Leeward (YFB-92) and Windward (YFB-93), the large harbor tug USS Wanamassa (YTB-820), the fuel oil barge YON 258, the open lighter YC 1639, LCU 1671 and an MK-8 landing craft used for hazardous cargo and off-route movement, and 50-foot utility boats for personnel transport outside ferry hours. Sustainment and construction cargo is delivered under government contract by Schuyler Line Navigation Company.

Leeward Point Field (ICAO MUGM, IATA NBW) is the active airfield, with a single asphalt runway 10/28 of 8,000 ft (2,400 m); it was built with a 6,000 ft runway in 1943 and extended in 1953 for jet aircraft, and now supports fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft in base support roles. McCalla Field, established 1931, served as an auxiliary landing field into the 1970s and is now closed. Electricity is generated primarily by diesel plant, supplemented since 2005 by four 950 kW wind turbines. Fresh water is produced on base by a desalination plant relocated from Point Loma after the Cuban government cut the Yateras River supply in 1964. The land perimeter, formerly mined, is monitored by motion and sound sensors.

Land for a coaling and naval station was granted to the United States in 1903. The base became the Atlantic Fleet's winter training area, with a fleet gunnery range system begun in 1905, and in the Second World War served as an intermediate distribution point for merchant convoys routed to the Panama Canal and the Caribbean. Fleet Training Group and the Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity were disestablished in 1995, and Fleet Composite Squadron 10 was phased out in 1993.