Naval Weapons Station Earle (Naval Ammunition Depot Earle)

Naval Weapons Station Earle is a United States Navy ordnance handling and storage installation in Monmouth County, New Jersey, under Commander, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic. It is divided into two separate areas: Mainside, covering some 10,000 acres in parts of Colts Neck, Howell, Wall Township and Tinton Falls, and the Waterfront Area on Sandy Hook Bay in the Leonardo section of Middletown. The two are linked by Normandy Road, a 15-mile military road and rail corridor that crosses and bypasses public roads.

The station's mission is executed by Navy Munitions Command, Detachment Earle, which stores, renovates, transships and demilitarises ammunition at the inland complex and issues it at the waterfront. The Waterfront Complex supplies ordnance for nearly every class of ship operated by the Navy and the United States Coast Guard, as well as commercial vessels of other nations. Its position in Sandy Hook Bay allows warships to load and offload ammunition at a distance from densely populated areas of the New York metropolitan region. Earle is the homeport of the fast combat support ships USNS Supply (T-AOE-6) and USNS Arctic (T-AOE-8), and of Combat Logistics Squadron 2.

The waterfront pier complex is among the longest finger pier arrangements in the world, extending roughly 2.1 miles into Sandy Hook Bay. A two-mile trestle carries road and rail out from shore, branching one mile out to Pier 1 and continuing to a junction with Piers 2, 3 and 4. At that junction, known as the wye, a concrete platform supports the port operations building and a forklift and battery-recharging shop. Mainside holds the bulk of the station's departments, magazines and ordnance-processing facilities. The Ben Moreell Solar Farm, a 28.5 MW array on 170 acres, was completed on the station in 2015.

The site was selected during the Second World War to provide an ammunition depot serving the New York area but sited clear of dense population, planning having been accelerated after the fire aboard the ammunition ship SS El Estero at Bayonne in early 1943. Sandy Hook Bay offered sheltered water for ammunition loading and rail access from the west, whence most ordnance shipments originated. Construction of Naval Ammunition Depot Earle, named for Rear Admiral Ralph Earle, began on 2 August 1943 and the depot was commissioned on 13 December 1943, with work on the connecting road and railway continuing thereafter. The installation was redesignated Naval Weapons Station Earle in 1974.