Naval Support Activity Charleston (Naval Weapons Station Charleston)

Naval Support Activity Charleston is a United States Navy administrative support installation on the west bank of the Cooper River in Goose Creek and Hanahan, South Carolina. It falls under Commander, Navy Installations Command through Navy Region Southeast, and forms the Naval Weapons Station component of Joint Base Charleston. Following the joint basing reorganisation, NSA Charleston was constituted as an embedded military unit within the 628th Air Base Wing, its Navy personnel distributed among the wing's installation support squadrons; the NSA commanding officer serves concurrently as Deputy Commander of the 628th Air Base Wing for installation support.

The installation supports more than 40 tenant commands. Nuclear propulsion training is conducted by the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, the Nuclear Power School and the Nuclear Power Training Unit, the latter using moored training submarines: USS Daniel Webster (SSBN-626), USS La Jolla (SSN-701) and USS San Francisco (SSN-711). Other tenants include Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, the Naval Consolidated Brig, Navy Munitions Command CONUS Detachment Charleston, Mobile Mine Assembly Unit Eleven, explosive ordnance detachments, Naval Operations Support Center Charleston, Naval Health Clinic Charleston and a Marine Corps Reserve Center. Army elements include the 841st Transportation Battalion, the 1189th Transportation Brigade and the Army Strategic Logistics Activity, the site functioning as the busiest continental US surface port in the defense transportation system.

The station covers more than 17,000 acres, including some 10,000 acres of forest and wetland, with over 16 miles of waterfront, deep-water piers, 38.2 miles of railroad and 292 miles of road. Ordnance handling and storage, including mines, is carried out from 269 above-ground magazines; it is the largest of the three weapons stations on the US East Coast. Charleston Air Force Base and the Charleston Defense Fuel Storage and Distribution Facility at Hanahan form the Air Force component of the joint base. On-base family housing comprises more than 1,800 units, with schools, child care and a medical clinic opened near NNPTC in 2008.

The site was commissioned on 5 November 1941 as the US Naval Ammunition Depot. Acquisition of the Northside area in 1954 added guided-missile handling and submarine docking, servicing and loading, and the Polaris Missile Facility Atlantic followed in 1960. The command was renamed Naval Weapons Station South in 1981 after absorbing the Charleston Army Depot; POMFLANT was decommissioned in the mid-1990s and fleet ballistic missile work transferred to Kings Bay, Georgia.