The aircraft carrier USS George Washington is preparing to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, news that comes as families of military personnel aboard the Lincoln have reported that sailors have attempted to jump overboard.
The Lincoln has been deployed for more than 250 days and hasn’t made a port call in over 200 days, as part of a deployment initially scheduled to end in May but extended due to the Iran war, straining the crew. For months, the ship has been deployed in the Arabian Sea, where it has been involved in bombing Iran and is currently part of the armada enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports.
Military Times and Stars and Stripes both reported this week that family members are extremely concerned about the strain on sailors and Marines aboard the carrier, and there have been multiple accounts of sailors attempting to jump overboard. On Thursday, CNN reported that one sailor did go overboard earlier this month. US officials told the outlet that the sailor was rescued after an hour and was then medically evacuated off the vessel.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) has said that he wrote a letter to US War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao about the conditions on the Lincoln. “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,” Blumenthal wrote.
“These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force, particularly as this Administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations,” the senator added.
According to USNI News, the USS George Washington and its strike group were in the Strait of Malacca on Thursday, transiting after a westbound transit through the Singapore Strait as the warships headed to the Middle East.
