Naval gunfire support (NGFS), also known as naval surface fire support (NSFS), or shore bombardment, is the use of naval artillery to provide fire support for amphibious assault and other troops operating within their range. NGFS is one of several disciplines encompassed by the term naval fires. Modern naval gunfire support is one of the three main components of amphibious warfare assault operations support, along with aircraft and ship-launched land-attack missiles. Shipborne guns have been used against shore defences since medieval naval warfare.

Naval gunfire support is classified into two types: direct fire, where the ship has line of sight with the target (either visually or through the use of radar), and indirect fire, which, to be accurate, requires an artillery observer to adjust fire.

When on the gun line, ships are particularly vulnerable to attack from aircraft coming from a landward direction and flying low to avoid radar detection, or from submarines because of a predictable and steady (non-evasive) course.

An early use of shore bombardment was during the Siege of Calais in 1347 when Edward III of England deployed ships carrying bombards and other artillery. An early type of vessel designed for the purpose of shore bombardment was the bomb vessel, which came into use during the 17th century. The burning of Falmouth by the Royal Navy was among the grievances of the United States Declaration of Independence. These were small ships whose main armament was one or two large mortars that fired explosive shells at a high angle. They were typically poor sailing craft that were of limited use outside their specialized role. However, small vessels armed with large mortars saw use as late as the American Civil War, when the Union Navy used them in several attacks on coastal fortifications.

During the 18th century, another special class of vessel known as floating battery was devised for shore bombardment. An early use was by the French and Spanish during the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779–1782). During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy commissioned several vessels of the Musquito class and Firm class. These carried either naval long guns or carronades. Floating batteries were used by the French and British during the Crimean War and by both sides during the American Civil War.

During World War I, the principal practitioner of naval bombardment (the term used prior to World War II for what was later designated naval gunfire support (NGFS)) was Britain's Royal Navy (RN); and the main theatres in which RN ships fired against targets ashore were the Aegean—Dardanelles/Gallipoli, and later the Salonika front—and along the Belgian coast.

In the Aegean the enemy coastal defences (forts, shore-batteries etc.) were fairly unsophisticated; however, on the Gallipoli peninsula these still proved to be difficult targets for the navy's low angle firing guns. Here, the fortress outlines tended to blend into the hillside making identification difficult, and the guns presented small targets. Mobile howitzers on the plateau presented even greater problems, since these were higher still, and being completely shielded from view proved almost impervious to naval bombardment.

For RN ships bombarding German targets along the Belgian coast the situation was altogether different from the autumn of 1915 until the enemy withdrawal in October 1918. For this role, the Royal Navy frequently made use of specially designed vessels known as monitors. They carried extremely heavy armament for their size, often a single turret from a decommissioned battleship. With a broad-beamed hull designed for stability and a shallow draft to allow close approach to the shore, the vessels were slow and thus unsuitable for naval combat. Two Lord Clive-class monitors were fitted with BL 18-inch Mk I naval guns, the largest guns ever used by the Royal Navy.