Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed concern about the conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has spent more than 260 days at sea.
During an interview on ABC News, Mullen noted that the carrier's commander, Captain Daniel Keeler, is working hard to address these issues, stressing that the challenges facing the ship reflect a complex reality that cannot be reduced to a single narrative, while the Navy strives to provide the necessary support to the crew under harsh operational conditions.
The aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, which has about 5,000 sailors and soldiers, has been deployed since November 21, with its mission extended to support the US war on Iran, at a time when Acting Navy Secretary Hong Kao announced that the ship would soon return to San Diego as part of a planned rotation, to be replaced by the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the US Central Command area.
Despite claims by service members' families of repeated suicide attempts on board the carrier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump denied an increase in such attempts. Hegseth described the media reports as "misrepresenting" the conditions on board the ship. However, Kao acknowledged in his statement that a small number of mental health cases were being addressed without loss of life, with dietary plans being modified and family contacts restricted due to the high operational threat.
Mullen attributed the carrier's long deployment to a lack of secure bases in the Middle East, where US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE were subjected to Iranian attacks during the war, forcing troops to remain at sea for longer periods. He noted that military planning required rapid adaptation to unforeseen circumstances that made it difficult to find resting places.
In a related context, Mullen revealed that in the early 2000s he had been calling for the Pentagon to strengthen its stockpile of aircraft carriers, but former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reduced the number from 12 to 11, arguing that the Navy needed more carriers if it intended to deploy them in this way, warning that the current pressure on the fleet comes at the expense of future capabilities that are now being consumed in ongoing operations.
