RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The U.S. is gearing up to send the USS George Washington aircraft carrier to relieve the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln, according to new reports, after concerns emerged about supplies and the mental health of sailors who have spent long months deployed on the Lincoln .
The Washington will swap in as part of a "previously scheduled rotation plan," The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing anonymous U.S. officials.
The Lincoln and its thousands of crew members have been deployed without a port call since December, prompting calls from lawmakers for investigations into conditions aboard the carrier.
Family members of sailors aboard the Lincoln have reported at least two incidents in which personnel attempted or appeared to prepare to go overboard, according to military news outlet the Navy Times .
The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has confirmed one sailor went overboard on August 3, but said they were quickly rescued. No one has died aboard the ship during its currently deployment, the military said.
Experts and officials say long and drawn-out deployments can harm the mental health of sailors and Marines on board, often in close quarters and without access to easy communication with their families.
The carrier was initially deployed to the Pacific in November but was rerouted to the Middle East in January ahead of the start of the U.S.'s war with Iran the following month.
It was expected to finish its deployment in May, but its time away has been repeatedly extended. It's not clear when the crew will return to the U.S. or stop off for a port call.
"We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday.
When complaints about conditions on the carrier first surfaced in April, Hegseth dismissed the reports as "fake news." The Navy said at the time the ongoing war had created a "highly contested environment where traditional supply hubs in the Middle East were disrupted by combat actions."
Although this caused some shortages, and interrupted mail deliveries, the Navy restored access to food, hygiene items and mail, it said in a statement.
"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," a Navy spokesperson told Newsweek earlier this week.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said in a letter addressed to Hegseth and the acting Secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, on Wednesday that he had "serious concerns" about the "increasing length" of carrier deployments and said it raised issues around whether the Navy could sustain their operations comfortably and look after the welfare of their sailors.
Both the Washington and the Lincoln are Nimitz -class carriers, rather than the newest type of carrier, the Ford -class.
They were commissioned within three years of one another, and have been in service for decades. The Lincoln was the fifth carrier of this class, and the Washington was the sixth.
The 10 Nimitz -class ships are 333 meters long, and carry roughly 5,000 sailors at a speed of up to 35 miles per hour. Nimitz-class carriers are thought to cost in the region of $3-4 billion and are powered by two nuclear reactors each. All U.S. aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered.
Both ships have four steam catapults, used to accelerate jets so they can take off on the deck, which is much shorter than a traditional runway on land.
Depending on the types of jets and helicopters onboard, Nimitz -class carriers can ferry up to 75 aircraft.
Like other types of aircraft carriers, the Washington and the Lincoln usually travel with other ships to make up a carrier strike group. This often includes several destroyers, which protect the carrier.
A spate of suicides rocked the USS George Washington while the carrier sat in a Virginia shipyard for an extended period of maintenance.
Three sailors assigned to the carrier died within just days of one another in April 2022, spurring on an investigation into whether the deaths were caused by certain factors and were somehow connected.
Separately, four sailors with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk, Virginia, died by suicide within less than a month at the end of 2022. Investigators determined their deaths were not related.
Then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Admiral Mike Gilday, who was serving as the chief of naval operations, said in a May, 2023 memo the Navy's top leadership had "let our standards slip—and in doing so we let our people down."
The Navy leaders pledged to prioritize sailors' well-being "not just through words but through identifiable actions," including assigning someone to oversee changes to Newport News shipyard, where the sailors were stationed.
The U.S. military said the Washington was moving through the Singapore Strait on Thursday and was in the jurisdiction of the U.S.'s 7th Fleet. The Japan-headquartered fleet covers over 48 million square miles in its remit.
An unnamed U.S. Navy official said the ship was transiting the Strait of Malacca, just north of the Singapore Strait, late Thursday ET.
The Strait of Malacca joins the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean. When the Lincoln was redirected toward the Middle East, it also passed through the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. said the Washington was in Guam in mid-June, and was tracked operating in the Philippine Sea by early July.
The carrier arrived in Da Nang, central Vietnam, for another scheduled port call on July 30.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Tobias Meyjes and Robert Greenall
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