The food shortages and other problems that sparked outrage over substandard conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln stemmed from Iranian attacks that devastated a key Navy base on the island nation of Bahrain — leaving the ship to rely on supplies from an outpost about 2,200 miles away. The Navy's Persian Gulf base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, is the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, which in 2004 unveiled a $25 million, state-of-the-art nerve center to support maritime military operations across the Middle East. But the site was largely destroyed by missiles and drones that hit it February 28, the first day of President Donald Trump's war against Iran, according to The New York Times.
A short time later, the Navy began using its base on Diego Garcia — a faraway UK-administered island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, south of the Maldives — as a new logistics hub, an unidentified military official told the NYT. The situation led to supply shortages on the Lincoln, whose crew of about 5,000 sailors and Marines has set a post-Vietnam War record of more than 270 continuous days at sea since the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier left its home port of San Diego on November 21, 2025. It also denied the crew the use of a nearby “liberty port” that would have provided the opportunity for shore leave.
On Thursday evening it was reported that the ship was heading back to the U.S. and was expected to arrive back in San Diego in a few weeks. The Pentagon referred an inquiry from The Independent to U.S. Central Command, which didn't immediately respond.
A White House spokesperson re-released an earlier statement that said President Donald Trump “cares about our troops more than anyone, and he is ensuring our brave servicemembers have all the resources they need to be successful as the United States Military continues to economically strangle the Iranian regime.” In recent weeks, relatives of some crew members went public with tales of skimpy, inedible meals, moldy showers, broken toilets and sporadic laundry service on the Lincoln. Military mother Danielle Rappa told NBC News that her son, who's serving on the ship, “describes the overall experience as a scene out of the [Fox TV show] American Horror Story, where he feels like everybody is dead but they don't know it yet.” One sailor went overboard August 3 wearing a life vest and was rescued after nearly an hour in the water, and others were prevented from also jumping off the ship, according to reports. Another mother said her son had told her that there were crew members who “weren’t doing well.” She said: “One person had just given up; they weren’t reporting for duty.
They were wanting to get sent home.” She said she’d been told that conditions had improved in April after parents started complaining. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed August 13 that conditions on the Lincoln were being “completely misrepresented” in news reports, saying, “We make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment.” Trump also described the Lincoln's deployment as "not nearly long enough" while speaking to reporters August 14. The president made the stunning remark a day after The Wall Street Journal reported the Navy was planning to replace the Lincoln with the USS George Washington, which the WSJ said had recently been operating in the South China Sea.
On Thursday the reported that the USS George Washington was now operating in the Middle East. Trump’s comment also came the same day Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao in a prepared statement that the Lincoln's crew had "crushed their deployment and will return home soon as part of a planned rotation." On August 15, Central Command — which is responsible for a region that stretches from northeast Africa into Central and South Asia — said its commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, had just completed a 10-day trip to the Middle East. It included a visit to the Lincoln, where Cooper addressed the crew members and thanked them for their dedication and courage.
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