Families of military personnel and members of the U.S. Congress are raising the alarm over the growing mental health crisis aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and Marines endure a record deployment at sea related to the war with Iran.
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Two major specialized military newspapers, Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, report that several sailors have attempted to jump overboard due to the precarious conditions and psychological stress they suffer aboard the Lincoln. The crew has been at sea for nine months and has spent 250 consecutive days without setting foot on land, a record for an aircraft carrier in the modern era.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that the wave of reports describing the deterioration of conditions and mental health problems aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln “completely misrepresented” the situation, thus rejecting growing Congressional pressure over the ship’s record deployment of nearly nine months.
“We make sure that every ship, every crew, and every captain have everything we can provide them at every moment,” Hegseth told reporters during a visit to Panama, adding that “some deployments are longer than others” and praising the sailors for enduring “high seas” and “austere conditions with fewer port calls.”
His statements came a day after Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Senator from Connecticut and member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao demanding a formal accounting of the aircraft carrier’s conditions. Blumenthal wrote that he had “serious concerns about the increasing length of Carrier Strike Group deployments” and stated that the Lincoln’s prolonged deployment raised broader questions about “the Navy’s ability to sustainably generate carrier forces while preserving the welfare of service members.”
In the letter, Blumenthal stated that sailors had reported “shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, mental health deterioration, concerns about deck safety” and postal service disruptions that caused aid packages to be lost for months. He posed six questions to the Pentagon leadership, including what indicators the Navy uses to assess fatigue and morale, and gave officials until August 27 to respond.
Concerned family members expressed their distress over their loved ones aboard the Lincoln at an emotional meeting with Navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, according to Stars and Stripes. One of the approximately 200 people present said her husband had texted her that same day saying he “hoped not to wake up tomorrow.”
The families’ concerns were expressed directly to Navy leadership, represented at the event by Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and other senior officers. A woman present at the meeting told Cao that the Navy had “broken the trust between us and the leadership,” according to the newspaper.
At a meeting, Vice Admiral Joseph Cahill, commander of Naval Surface Forces, acknowledged the pressure sailors and their families are under, according to MS NOW, and told them: “We hear you loud and clear (about) the impact this has on families, service members, and our long-term ability to maintain the health of our forces.”
Democratic Representative Mike Levin of California referenced the meeting in a Friday post on X, where he said families described “moldy showers, broken toilets, weeks without hot water, and meals reduced to half a cup of rice and two tortillas.”
“Sailors were so exhausted that, according to a family member, the ship’s own doctor warned them they needed to get to port soon or people would start losing their minds,” he wrote.
Navy Times detailed the failed suicide attempts aboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his sea duty period was repeatedly extended. “He’s scared. He thinks he will receive a dishonorable discharge and that, just because he was exhausted, his 13-year career will be ruined just like that,” she said.
The newspaper quoted the wife of another sailor whose husband was involved in a separate incident aboard the Lincoln, in which he prevented a crew member from jumping, grabbed him, and brought him back on deck.
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Meanwhile, a sailor went overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln last month, a U.S. official told CNN, amid reports about the crew members’ deteriorating mental health during their prolonged deployment in the war against Iran.
According to the official, the sailor was quickly rescued and received medical attention. The circumstances under which he went overboard are not clear at this time, nor is it known whether the sailor returned to duty or was evacuated from the ship, the television network said.
Since the Lincoln departed its home port in San Diego last November, the aircraft carrier has been deployed for more than 250 days after being redirected to the Middle East to support U.S. operations in the war with Iran. With more than 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard, it has not docked in port for over 200 days, setting a modern record for consecutive days at sea, according to Senator Richard Blumenthal.
The USS George Washington carrier group, which completed a port call in Vietnam on August 5, is currently heading to the Middle East to replace the Lincoln, a U.S. official told CNN. The official indicated that the swap was already planned.
Earlier this year, the USS Gerald R. Ford broke the record for the longest aircraft carrier deployment since the Vietnam War, a prolonged deployment that tested morale amid intense months of combat.
In March, a fire broke out in the ship’s laundry that the crew took 30 hours to extinguish. No sailors were injured, but approximately 600 lost access to their bunks due to the damage.
As CNN reported at the time, the Navy overall faces burnout issues among sailors, according to multiple sources familiar with internal discussions on the matter. Naval aviation personnel, from pilots to maintenance technicians, are leaving the service at a high rate, according to those sources.
Traditionally, the Navy plans aircraft carrier deployments for about six or seven months, but this does not mean sailors are expected to remain continuously at sea for that long. Deployments are usually interrupted with port calls, which the Navy describes as opportunities for sailors to rest from the demands of life at sea. Its 2025 report on aircraft carriers indicated that sailors may work more than 12 hours daily during operations.
A 2024 study by the Naval Postgraduate School, conducted with 873 sailors, linked worse mood with shorter, poorer quality, and more fragmented sleep. Another Navy study, also from 2024, revealed that 58 submariners slept an average of 6.6 hours daily over 30 days at sea, and their mood worsened by the end of the period.
A July CNN poll revealed that a record 73% of U.S. adults say President Donald Trump has not paid enough attention to the country’s most important issues, and 67% believe Trump’s decisions on military action in Iran have harmed the United States.
Armen Kurdian, a retired Navy captain who served aboard the Lincoln, told KFMB, a CNN affiliate: “It’s not uncommon for a strike group to encounter someone who wants to jump overboard or commit suicide during a deployment.”
“Obviously, it doesn’t happen every day, but it happens. So the fact that it’s happening during this deployment is not surprising,” Kurdian said.
