Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have attempted to jump overboard during a record-breaking deployment that has kept 5,000 crew members at sea for 250 consecutive days without setting foot on land. Their families are panicking. Congress is alarmed. And Pete Hegseth called the whole thing fake news.
250 Days. Two Days on Land. Multiple Suicide Attempts.
The USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego on November 21 of last year, bound for the Pacific. Then the US-Israel war with Iran started, and the Navy redirected it to the Middle East. What was supposed to be a routine deployment has become something that doesn't have a clean word for it in peacetime.
The Navy Times and Stars and Stripes are both reporting multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard during the current deployment. The crew is now in its ninth month at sea. According to the Guardian, they have had exactly two days on land since November: one stop in Guam in December, one in Oman in July. The deployment was originally supposed to end in May. It has been extended multiple times.
Annabelle Loma told the Navy Times that her husband tried to jump overboard after yet another extension was announced. "He's scared. He thinks he'll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that," she said. Another sailor's wife described how her husband physically grabbed a fellow crew member and dragged him back onto the deck to stop him from going over.
Half a Cup of Rice, Two Tortillas, No Soap
California Democratic congressman Mike Levin laid out the conditions on X this week, and the list reads like a hostage situation inventory. Moldy showers. Broken toilets. Laundry down for weeks. Long stretches without hot water. A meal that came to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, no deodorant, no toothpaste.
This is not a submarine on a covert mission operating under deliberate austerity. This is a 5,000-person aircraft carrier, the largest class of warship ever built, supposedly the crown jewel of American military power projection. And the crew can't get a working toilet.
Back in April, photos of rationed, poor-quality food leaked out, along with reports of water shortages and the same moldy showers and broken laundry machines. It caused a public outcry. These are not new problems. They are months-old problems that have been ignored and papered over while the deployment kept getting extended.
Hegseth Called It Fake News. Then Kids Tried to Die.
When those April reports surfaced, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed them as "more fake news." That was his response to photos and firsthand accounts from sailors' family members about conditions on a warship he is constitutionally responsible for.
Levin didn't let that one go quietly. "These men and women signed up to serve their country," he said this week. "The least their country owes them is hot water, a working toilet, and a real meal. Hegseth cannot even manage that, and he has the nerve to look their families in the eye and call them liars."
The Guardian reached out to the Navy for comment on the overboard attempts. The Navy did not respond.
Two Hundred Families in a Room, Screaming Into the Void
Last Thursday in San Diego, about 200 family members of Lincoln crew members gathered for a town hall with Navy leadership. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao was there, along with other top officials. Stars and Stripes reported that one spouse told Cao directly that the Navy had "broken trust between us and the leadership."
Another woman at the meeting said her husband texted her that morning to say he hopes he doesn't wake up tomorrow. She said this to the acting Navy secretary. In person. At a meeting the Navy convened.
Colorado Democratic congressman Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been tracking this story. He said the strain on service members and their families aboard the Lincoln is "building week by week." That is a very diplomatic way of describing a situation where sailors are trying to throw themselves into the ocean.
The Research Already Told Us This Would Happen
A study published last year, cited by the Guardian, examined the specific stress factors that deployed Navy sailors face. The most common ones: loud noises, chronic lack of rest, and inadequate mental and physical health care. The researchers surveyed deployed sailors and found that nearly half reported they were not receiving adequate help coping with stress at sea.
The study's conclusion was direct: "Given the high rates of military suicide, including within the Navy, efforts to improve health care access on ships are urgently needed."
That research existed before the Lincoln deployed. Before the extensions. Before the April reports. Before Hegseth said fake news. Before the town hall. Before sailors started trying to go overboard. The information was there. Nobody in a position of authority over this deployment appears to have read it, or cared.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that the United States military is the most powerful, best-resourced fighting force in the history of human civilization. And that may be true, measured in aircraft carriers and missile systems and defense budget line items. But somewhere between the F-35 program and the $886 billion annual budget, nobody allocated funds for soap on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Nobody arranged a port call for 5,000 people who have been floating in a combat zone for nine months. Nobody looked at the research on military suicide rates and connected it to the decision to keep extending a deployment indefinitely with no end in sight.
Pete Hegseth called it fake news. That is the whole story, in three words. A man in charge of the lives of hundreds of thousands of active-duty service members heard reports of rationed food and broken toilets and chose the Fox News reflex over the basic duty of his office. And now sailors are trying to jump off aircraft carriers, and their wives are telling the acting Navy secretary that the institution has broken their trust, and the Navy's response to the Guardian's questions was silence.
There is a version of American patriotism that puts yellow ribbons on pickup trucks and demands everyone stand for the anthem. And then there is the version that actually makes sure the people doing the fighting have hot water and a working bathroom and enough food to get through a shift. Those two versions of patriotism are currently producing very different outcomes on the USS Abraham Lincoln, and only one of them involves body bags.
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