WASHINGTON — Democratic senators have begun raising concerns about the extended deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln, amid reports about poor living conditions and a lack of downtime for the crew after more than 8½ months at sea.
The Lincoln, a San Diego-based aircraft carrier with a crew of about 5,000 sailors, is supporting U.S. operations in the Middle East against Iran.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Hung Cao, the acting Navy secretary, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) described a list of reported problems on the ship.
“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,” he wrote about the problems, many of which were reported earlier by Navy Times and Stars and Stripes.
Blumenthal added that the Trump administration had kept aircraft carriers at sea far longer than usual during its pressure campaign against Venezuela and its war with Iran.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.) said in a social media post Wednesday that he was requesting an overnight visit to the Lincoln for a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I’ve seen active duty,” said Gallego, who served in combat as a Marine. “The way he’s treating our service members as he carries out this illegal war is not just disgusting; it’s dangerous.”
The Navy is sending the aircraft carrier George Washington to the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about ship schedules.
“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth told reporters during a visit to Panama on Thursday, according to Reuters. “Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody. What they do in those high seas in those austere conditions with less port calls — it’s incredible.”
A second carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush deployed on March 31 and is already operating in the Middle East.
The Navy’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was deployed for 326 days before it returned home in May, breaking the record for the longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam War.
The Ford deployed from Norfolk, Va., on June 24, 2025, and was operating in the Mediterranean when it was redirected to the Caribbean in October as part of the force that captured President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. In February the ship was sent to the Middle East as part of a buildup of U.S. military forces in the region that launched the war against Iran late that month.
During its deployment, the ship suffered a fire and food shortages along with mechanical problems.
The longer warship deployments are, the more they wear on people and equipment alike. When in constant operation, gear often begins to break or become inoperable if replacement parts are not readily available. And the nonstop cycle can take a toll on morale.
Keeping warships out for extended periods often also creates other issues, such as upending plans that keep ships in certain parts of the globe for strategic reasons, along with interrupting shipyard maintenance schedules that are developed years in advance.
“The Navy has a lot of flexibility to react to contingency operations, but as those deployments get extended and demand more underway time outside of normal schedules, readiness and maintenance suffer,” Mike Franken, a retired Navy vice admiral, said in an interview. “We just don’t have the ability to recover from that quickly. It will take years.”
The Lincoln itself had to fend off attacks from Iran during the early phase of the war.
“Iran shot hundreds and hundreds of missiles and one-way attack drones at our aircraft carrier,” Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on April 8. “Every single one of those shots, easily shot down miles and miles away from the Abe Lincoln.”
The Lincoln has also helped enforce the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, which initially ran from April 13 until a ceasefire agreement was announced in mid-June, and then resumed on July 15.
During the first blockade, U.S. Central Command, which directs military operations across the Middle East, said its forces disabled nine “noncompliant” vessels through gunfire and missile attacks, and had “redirected” 135 ships that ultimately complied with the blockade order.
In the second blockade, there appear to have been fewer U.S. attacks on merchant ships. In its most recent update on Aug. 9, Central Command said it had redirected 55 commercial vessels, disabled two, and boarded two to “ensure compliance” since the blockade was reinstated.
When the Lincoln’s relief will arrive is unclear, but the George Washington recently passed through the Strait of Malacca — a major transit route through the Pacific Ocean in Indonesian waters — heading west, according to a second U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss warship movements.
With the Navy’s limited numbers of aircraft carriers being routinely pushed months beyond their scheduled deployments, Franken said, it will begin to limit their availability for combat operations in the future.
“I guarantee you that the first two years of the Trump administration will definitely affect the next two years of the Trump administration,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
