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Eight sailors in the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during its record-long deployment for the war with Iran, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao confirmed in a letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Getting into it: The letter, dated last week and responding to questions Gillibrand sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in August, covers roughly 6,000 to 7,000 sailors across about half a dozen ships, and Cao wrote that no one in the strike group died by suicide during the deployment. That rate lines up roughly with the Navy as a whole, which recorded 356 suicide attempts among about 337,000 active-duty sailors in 2024, the most recent year with Pentagon data. But one US military official told CNN that recent carrier strike group deployments have typically seen one or two attempts a year.
The Lincoln left San Diego last November and went longer without a port call than any ship in Navy history before stopping in Thailand earlier this month. In the letter, Cao listed the mental health staff on board, including five chaplains, a psychologist, a clinical social worker, three behavioral health technicians and a facility dog. He also acknowledged “localized piping failures” early in the deployment, along with trouble keeping the ship’s desalination system running, and said main meal options were cut from two to one for a “short time” because of limited chances to resupply.
Crew members had previously told CNN that morale was very low, bathrooms and water fountains were often shut down and hot water was frequently unavailable.
President Trump dismissed those concerns last month, answering “No. No. No.” when asked whether the deployment had gone on too long and adding, “Not nearly long enough.” Hegseth said the conditions on board had been “misrepresented,” and the Navy previously told CNN it had not seen an increase in suicidal thoughts or attempts on the ship.
In a statement, Senator Gillibrand said, “That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable.”
This all comes as the Lincoln, which arrived in Guam on Saturday after being replaced in the Middle East by the USS George Washington, heads back to San Diego, where a congressional delegation plans to board the carrier for an oversight visit when it arrives in the coming weeks.
