Joint Base Charleston is now officially Joint Base Lindsey Graham, honoring the late senator from South Carolina who served for decades in the U.S. Air Force.
The Pentagon announced late last month that the base, located in North Charleston, South Carolina, would be renamed after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. The renaming took place Monday with a ceremony attended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as state and local officials.
A late July memo, signed by Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, directed staff to begin working with Air Mobility Command and Joint Base Charleston to rename the base, attributing the honor to Graham’s “decades of distinguished service to the United States Congress and the United States Air Force.”
Graham spent 33 years in the Air Force as an active-duty staff judge advocate, a South Carolina Air National Guard officer and a senior lawyer in the Air Force Reserve.
He died unexpectedly from an aortic dissection at the age of 71 in mid-July.
Graham was elected to the House of Representatives in 1994 and the Senate in 2002.
Graham was a member of the Senate Budget Committee, leading efforts to further military funding. Before his death, he secured $212 million for the Charleston base to go toward the Coast Guard for enhanced readiness.
“Beyond the uniform, Senator Graham has been a vital supporter to this base,” base Commander Col. Kenneth Shirley said during the unveiling ceremony. “His unwavering support to the installation’s mission was not just words. His support was cemented into the foundation that makes this base.”
In a speech Monday, Hegseth applauded Graham for “taking on a radical leftist ideology that had run rampant in the media, in academia and even among a few members of Congress,” which he said had curbed the military’s recruiting numbers under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
The defense secretary pointed to the historic $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 defense budget currently under consideration by Congress, saying that Graham told Hegseth it was the “best military budget” he has seen since taking office.
“This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute that Congress could give than to invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion,” Hegseth said.
The base mainly houses the 628th Air Base Wing, 437th Airlift Wing and the reserve 315th Airlift Wing, with a total force of over 90,000 airmen, sailors, soldiers, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, civilians and retirees across four installations. The base manages the force’s largest fleet of C-17 Globemaster II cargo aircraft.
Cristina Stassis is a reporter covering stories surrounding the defense industry, national security, military/veteran affairs and more. She previously worked as an editorial fellow for Defense News in 2024 where she assisted the newsroom in breaking news across Sightline Media Group.
