Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from the War Department about conditions on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln after multiple reports indicate the grind of an extended deployment has taken a severe mental toll on the ship’s roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines.
On Tuesday, Navy Times reported that at least two sailors had to be prevented from jumping overboard, while other family members who spoke to the outlet said their loved ones were in a deep funk aboard the Lincoln.
The carrier began a scheduled seven-month deployment in the South China Sea this past November, but was redirected to the Arabian Sea in January, shortly before the start of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. It has remained there ever since.
Last week, according to MS NOW, more than 200 family members met with acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao to raise their concerns. One military spouse recounted receiving a message from her husband that “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow,” an attendee told Stars and Stripes.
“When she can email me, she’s definitely down,” Shelby Sanders, whose mother is serving on board the Lincoln, told Navy Times. “I think they’ve had five weeks of non-stop combat operations or something like that, so that makes it really tough to communicate consistently or even know if we’ll be able to. It sucks.”
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), whose district covers part of San Diego County, reported in an X post Aug. 7 that the Lincoln had “[m]oldy showers, broken toilets, no hot water for weeks, meals that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas,” as well as a “ship’s store out of soap, deodorant, and toothpaste” and “sailors so worn down that, according to one family member, the ship’s own doctor warned they need to reach port soon or people are going to start losing their minds.”
“Today would be a great day for [President] Trump to fire [War Secretary] Pete Hegseth and replace him with someone who is actually competent,” Levin doubled down on X Wednesday. “Every American and every soldier deployed abroad would be safer for it.”
In a Wednesday letter to Hegseth and Cao, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) noted that the Lincoln “has not made a port call in over 200 days, setting a record for consecutive days at sea.”
“There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months,” added Blumenthal, who warned that the Navy “must ensure that decisions to extend carrier deployments account not only for immediate operational requirements, but also for their cumulative effects on crew safety, equipment readiness, maintenance schedules, and the ability of the carrier force to meet future contingencies.”
Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, demanded the Navy provide its own reporting on conditions aboard the carrier, its assessment of the enlisted men and women’s physical and mental readiness to perform their duties, and whether the Lincoln’s continued deployment was necessary to achieve US military objectives against Iran.
“We have not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship,” the Navy told CNN in a statement Thursday. “We take every service member’s well-being seriously and have religious, medical and mental health professionals available to assess and address concerns as they arise.”
“The men and women aboard the Lincoln have answered the call to serve their country. The Department owes them not only adequate supplies, maintenance, and support during this deployment, but a sustainable force-generation model that does not rely on repeatedly extending sailors and ships to meet persistent operational demands,” Blumenthal concluded his letter to Hegseth and Cao.
“Our servicemembers deserve nothing less than the full support of their government—and the American people deserve a military strategy that is worthy of the sacrifices we ask them to make.”
