Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station

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The Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station site has been owned and operated by the government since 1942 when it acquired 9,147 acres of the old Santa Margarita Ranch, which was originally a Spanish land grant.
In 1944, the Fallbrook Ammunition Quality Evaluation (AQE) Laboratory was established to support the Pacific and European Allied forces in World War II.

Commissioned in February 1942, then Naval Ammunition Depot (NAD) Fallbrook was constructed in the midst of 8851 beautiful rolling acres of California sagebrush. After World War Two, the Depot was placed in a reduced operational status until the beginning of hostilities in Korea. In 1958, NAD Fallbrook was designated an annex of the Naval Ammunition and Net Depot Seal Beach. On October 1, 1997 the Navy’s ordnance handling installations were reorganized, with now Detachment Fallbrook reporting to the present Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach.

Unique among naval weapons storage areas, Detachment Fallbrook is located 20 miles inland. Ammunition is transferred to and from ships by a process known as Vertical Replenishment, or VERTREP. In this operation, ammunition is taken by truck from a magazine on base to a helicopter pad located on the coast inside Camp Pendleton. From there a CH-46 Sea Knight or CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter picks up the load and transfers it to the receiving ship waiting several miles off the coast. In this manner, large vessels such as aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships can be loaded without leaving their primary Southern California operating and training areas.

Detachment Fallbrook is also home to the only West Coast Air-Launched Missile Production and Storage Facility. Here air-launched missiles such as the Phoenix, Sidewinder, Maverick, and HARM are inspected, maintained, and re-certified. During wartime the detachment’s VERTREP capability could come in especially handy. Aircraft Carriers steaming off the coast can helicopter malfunctioning weapons off ship and have them at the Air Warfare Center’s maintenance facilities within one hour. The weapons could then be quickly inspected, fixed, and returned, potentially within the same day.

The Detachment has a complement of 85 military personnel and a civil service force of approximately 100. Infrastructure includes 121 miles of road, 200 magazines, and 119 buildings. The last remnants of the nation’s napalm stockpile were stored at Fallbrook, and a state-of-the-art facility was built on base to help eliminate these weapons. The last full napalm canister was destroyed in March, 2001. Overall, the installation stores munitions with a monetary value of over 2 billion dollars. Several endangered or threatened species, including the Stevens kangaroo rat, the California gnatcatcher and the cactus wren, share the base with their Navy neighbors.

Beginning in 1973 the Department of the Navy (DoN) began placing Vietnam era napalm canisters in storage at the Weapons Support Facility, Fallbrook Detachment.
By 1978 all such canisters had been consolidated and placed at the Detachment for storage and maintenance. The stockpile consists of approximately 34,123 individually crated napalm canisters. The canisters are not fused nor do they contain ignition devices. Over time, some of the aluminum canisters have degraded which has resulted in leaks. On-going maintenance of the stockpile includes the identification and repair of leaking canisters, grounds maintenance, and air monitoring.

The Palm Enterprises Treatment Facility is an abandoned hazardous waste treatment facility located at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, Detachment Fallbrook military installation. The Palm Enterprises Treatment Facility was issued a hazardous waste facility permit on 31 March 1988, which authorized Palm Enterprises to demilitarize and recycle the Navy’s napalm canisters stored at three (3) locations at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, Detachment Fallbrook. The permitted units consisted of a 12,000-gallon underground storage tank (Chemical Solution Storage Tank) and a Gasoline Separator Tank. Several pieces of ancillary equipment were also used in the treatment process. During 1989, the Palm Enterprises Treatment Facility was deactivated permanently when Palm Enterprises operations were discontinued due to the failure of the facility equipment to induce adequate throughput of the napalm through its distillation process to separate the benzene and polystyrene from the gasoline.