A Floating Nightmare

With so many billions appropriated, why aren’t our aircraft carriers in decent enough condition for sailors to not want to throw themselves overboard?

Photo courtesy of Yahoo News

A note to readers: This piece discusses attempted suicide and self-harm. Discretion advised.

Multiple sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have reportedly attempted to jump overboard as the aircraft carrier’s deployment stretches past 260 days, one of the longest carrier deployments in modern Navy history. The Navy has declined to say how many such attempts have been made.

These attempts follow months of deteriorating conditions aboard the carrier and a deployment that was supposed to end in May but was instead extended repeatedly with no announced return date. Crew members have described broken toilets, moldy showers, laundry facilities down for weeks and meals that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. Families of the roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard say they have witnessed morale collapse in real time, through phone calls and the rare email that gets through.

The Navy has repeatedly downplayed the reports. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed the first round of complaints over food shortages as “fake news” in April. He used nearly identical language this month to dismiss the latest accounts.

The never-ending deployment

The USS Abraham Lincoln left its home port of San Diego on Nov. 21 for what was initially planned as a routine Pacific deployment. In January, as the United States and Israel prepared to strike Iran, the carrier was redirected to the Middle East, where it has remained ever since. The war with Iran began Feb. 28.

The deployment was expected to end in May. Instead it has been extended multiple times, and the Navy has not given families a public return date. As of this week the carrier has been at sea more than 260 days.

In that time, the crew has set foot on land twice. The ship stopped briefly in Guam in December, though many sailors were not permitted to disembark, and it made a resupply stop in Oman in July, where sailors who did get off the ship were confined to a secure compound within the port. In early July, Lincoln broke the modern-day Navy record for the most continuous days at sea without a port call.

Six months at sea used to be the standard length for a carrier strike group deployment. A shrinking carrier fleet and rising demand across multiple theaters have made deployments like Lincoln’s increasingly common rather than exceptional.

Half a cup of rice and two tortillas

By the time families went public with their concerns in early August, the list of grievances had grown long. Relatives described non-operational toilets, moldy showers, laundry facilities that had been broken for weeks and extended stretches with no hot water for washing. The ship’s store often ran short of basic hygiene items, including soap, deodorant and toothpaste.

As Task & Purpose reported, the food complaints surfaced first, in April, when photos taken by family members and later published showed half-empty meal trays and small portions of gray, processed meat. One mother, Nicole Conrad, said her son at one point was served half a cup of rice and two tortillas for a meal. The photos prompted several members of Congress to call for investigations into conditions aboard Lincoln and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli.

At the time, the Navy denied any shortage. The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations stated on social media that both ships had “sufficient food onboard to serve their crews with healthy options.” Hegseth went further, calling the reporting “fake news.”

The Navy took a similar posture on the plumbing and shower complaints at the family town halls this month. Leadership acknowledged what they described as a “stubborn clog” that had knocked out toilets in one zone of the ship for an extended period, but said sailors were trained to handle plumbing repairs and that most of the affected toilets were fixed quickly. On the showers, officials suggested what sailors took for mold might actually be mildew caused by the ship’s ventilation system, adding that industrial hygienists test the bathrooms to confirm the fans and airflow are working.

The Fifth Fleet’s spokesman, Cmdr. Joseph Hontz, put the wear and tear in the context of the deck’s workload: Lincoln’s flight deck has handled more than 10,000 aircraft sorties over the course of the deployment. “Though more than 250 days on deployment is challenging for the crew and their equipment, they remain resilient and ready to accomplish any tasking given to them,” Hontz said. “The ship remains fully capable of meeting all mission tasking.”

The Navy has also directly disputed the specific conditions families describe. Asked about the reports, officials said sailors have “continuous access to clean water, functional AC, and healthy meal options.”

Sailors nearly overboard

Against that backdrop, multiple sailors aboard Lincoln have attempted to go overboard. Annabelle Loma’s husband was one of those who made the attempt, and he is now back home on medical hold. In a separate incident, a sailor on watch saw a shipmate preparing to go over the side and pulled him back onto the deck before other crew members arrived to help. Lincoln’s command informed the crew of the episode in a shipwide announcement.

Per Stars and Stripes, other families described similar despair in their loved ones’ messages. One wife told Stars and Stripes her husband had texted her that he hoped he wouldn’t wake up the next day. A parent told the outlet that their son had said he and his shipmates thought constantly about jumping off the ship, just for the relief of it.

The Navy has not said how many sailors have attempted to go overboard or otherwise engaged in self-harm during the deployment. In statements to multiple outlets this week, officials disputed any rise in suicidal ideation aboard the ship. “Based on information available to the command, we have not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship,” the Navy told Task & Purpose. A similar statement went to CNN: “We have not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship. 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.”

Families vs. the Navy

Roughly 200 family members packed a banquet room at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego on Aug. 6 to confront acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao over conditions aboard the Lincoln and the lack of any announced return date. Cao has led the Navy as its top civilian since April, when Hegseth fired Secretary John Phelan following repeated clashes between the two.

Attendees described the meeting as tense and, at times, combative. Spouses of sailors were in tears asking Navy leadership what was being done to address mental health and exhaustion aboard the ship. One parent said her daughter believes she is never going to come home, and that she is going to die on the ship.

Cao told families the Navy is preparing the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group to relieve the Lincoln, but he could not say when that would happen, citing operational security. The Navy has since reportedly changed course, with the USS George Washington now expected to relieve the Lincoln. Meanwhile, families are left waiting without answers as their loved ones miss major life events at home, including births and funerals. One spouse, describing a baby born during the deployment, said, “My husband has gotten no time with her.”

Tensions carried into a separate virtual meeting later that night between Navy leadership and family members. Vice Adm. Joseph Cahill, commander of Naval Surface Forces, acknowledged the strain the deployment has placed on sailors and their families. “We hear you loud and clear regarding the impact this has on families, on service members and the long-term ability of us to stand, sustain our forces’ health,” Cahill said. He pointed to deployment-resilience counselors, chaplains and Human Factors Councils the Navy uses to review risks to sailors’ well-being.

Not the first time

The Lincoln is not the only carrier to have broken a modern deployment record in recent months. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest and most advanced carrier in the fleet, spent 326 days at sea on a deployment that took it from operations off Venezuela to supporting Operation Epic Fury in the Middle East, setting the modern-era record for the longest carrier deployment before returning to Norfolk in May.

The Ford suffered its own version of Lincoln’s plumbing failures, and its problems ran deeper and longer. The carrier’s sewage system was built around a vacuum-based design adapted from cruise ships to conserve water, but the narrow pipes proved inadequate for a crew of more than 4,600. The Navy has called for outside assistance with the toilets dozens of times since 2023, with the pace of those calls accelerating through 2025. During one especially bad stretch, engineering teams working 19-hour shifts logged 205 breakdowns over four days.

The Navy’s public posture on the Ford was similar to its present position on the Lincoln: acknowledge the mechanical problem while insisting it hadn’t compromised the mission. A spokesperson said repairs typically take between 30 minutes and two hours and that the rest of the system continues operating independently in the meantime.

And yet there is an inescapable bottom-line truth: Two of the Navy’s most capable carriers, deployed back to back into the same conflict, set extraordinary deployment records because there aren’t enough ships to replace them, and both began badly breaking down mid-mission.

How much money to “kill bad guys”?

None of this is happening for lack of funding, at least not in the aggregate. Congress authorized roughly $856 billion for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2026, part of a broader $891 billion national defense budget. On top of that, the administration has separately sought more than $200 billion specifically to fund the war against Iran. Asked about the number, Hegseth didn’t dispute it. “As far as $200 billion, I think that number could move, obviously,” he told reporters. “It takes money to kill bad guys.”

Glib and juvenile response notwithstanding, by July the money set aside for day-to-day Navy and Air Force operations was running out. Congressional aides said funding for ongoing military operations for both services was on track to be exhausted by the end of that month. To bridge the gap, the Pentagon began shifting money from elsewhere in its budget, including funds set aside for equipment, facility and maintenance work, while limiting or canceling training exercises that keep units combat-ready.

Those are the same kinds of maintenance and readiness funds needed to keep ships and crews functioning through prolonged deployments. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) put the underlying complaint plainly: “We need to know what we’re purchasing and why we’re purchasing it.” The Pentagon has yet to send Congress a full accounting of what the war has cost so far.

Again, the bottom line is appalling: a Pentagon asking for hundreds of billions of dollars to sustain a deeply unpopular and increasingly unwinnable war finds itself, at the same time, unable to keep a carrier’s toilets working or its sailors fed.

Hegseth under fire

Democratic lawmakers have begun to demand answers. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a formal inquiry to Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao requiring them to respond, by a date certain, to conditions aboard the Lincoln. The letter frames the crisis as a readiness question as much as a crew welfare one, asking “whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of” it and noting the administration “has yet to adequately explain the objectives, end state, or anticipated duration of those operations.”

That follows an earlier round of congressional pressure. When photos of half-empty meal trays surfaced in April, several members of Congress called for formal investigations into conditions aboard Lincoln and the USS Tripoli. The accountability question also reached a committee room. At an April 29 House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared to answer lawmakers’ questions. Ranking member Adam Smith (D-WA) pressed for accountability over how the Pentagon would manage a major budget increase alongside the Iran war’s mounting costs. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), who represents the Lincoln’s home port of San Diego, questioned Hegseth’s fitness for the job directly, telling him: “Maybe you are the one responsible for this failure, and the president should think about replacing you.”

Hegseth’s public response has been consistent. He dismissed the April food-shortage photos as “fake news,” rejected the war’s “quagmire” framing outright in March, and used nearly identical language (“more fake news”) to describe this month’s reporting on conditions aboard Lincoln.

“That is my job.”

As one Hill opinion columnist noted, by Hegseth’s own terms he is badly failing in his position. Hegseth once declared, “Warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness. That’s it. That is my job.” The Lincoln deployment, and the Ford deployment before it, demonstrate just how off the rails things have gone.

The Pentagon’s own budget documents show training and maintenance funds being drained to cover war costs, even as the department seeks hundreds of billions more from Congress. Two of the Navy’s premier carriers have each endured extraordinarily long deployments within months of each other, both plagued by the same basic failures of plumbing, food and morale. And the war driving the Lincoln’s extension still has no publicly stated end date, objective or exit strategy.

The Navy has faced comparable crises of morale and public trust before. When nine sailors aboard the USS George Washington died by suicide between 2017 and 2022 during a prolonged shipyard overhaul, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was pressed on the matter directly in a congressional hearing. His response was notably different in tone from Hegseth’s posture toward the Lincoln. Rather than disputing the reporting, Austin described the situation as unanticipated and said he expected Navy leadership to act on the findings of an investigation already underway. That investigation followed, and found systemic institutional failures rather than a series of unconnected incidents.

The Pentagon under Hegseth has announced no comparable investigation into conditions aboard the Lincoln.

An unbearable burden

Rep. Sara Jacobs said what worries her most about Lincoln’s sailors isn’t abstract. “I’m deeply worried about their exhaustion and mental health, because history has shown it can lead to serious consequences, including increased risk of suicide.”

For families like the Guevaras and the Lomas, that worry is daily. Manuel Guevara, whose son serves aboard Lincoln, fears that the deployment itself could cost him his son. “I don’t want to worry that the circumstances of this deployment will get the best of my son, and he doesn’t make it back home,” Guevara said. “That’s an unbearable burden on my heart.”

Annabelle Loma’s fear is more immediate. Her husband is already home on medical hold, after attempting to go overboard, and is now afraid of what comes next. “He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” Loma said. “That’s not fair, that’s not right. That’s not what he should be worrying about right now.”