8 Sailors in U.S.S. Lincoln Strike Group Attempted Suicide, Navy Says

By Josie Calloway · Reporting from Pittsburgh · September 24, 2026

Acting navy secretary Hung Cao confirmed eight suicide attempts during a grueling Middle East deployment, proving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrong.

A war of endless months and broken plumbing on the carrier Eight sailors assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during a deployment that stretched past reason, according to a letter sent Tuesday by Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, as reported by the BBC. The deployment began in November when the carrier was sent to the Middle East ahead of attacks on Iran in February. It was originally scheduled to end in May. Instead, the ship stayed at sea. The crew spent 286 days away, including 208 consecutive days without a port call, according to reporting in The Guardian. Over 5,000 crew members lived through conditions that turned a floating fortress into a psychological trap.

The misery was not mysterious. Iran damaged at least 20 to 28 US military bases in the Middle East during the 2026 war, rendering the US 5th Fleet naval base in Bahrain inoperable, as documented in the dossier. When the Bahrain hub fell, the supply lines snapped. The ship suffered localized piping failures, broken toilets, and failing reverse osmosis desalination units that left sailors without proper water, according to CBS News and the Times of India. In August, MS Now reported on mold in the ship showers and dwindling supplies of food and soap. Main entrée options were temporarily reduced from two to one to optimize endurance.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looked at these reports in August and told reporters that news outlets completely misrepresented the situation. He insisted that the administration made sure every ship had everything it could provide at every single moment. But a crew member told CNN that morale was very low, suicidal ideation was frequently heard, and basic amenities such as water fountains and hot water were frequently unavailable. In March, shipmates thwarted one sailor's attempt to go overboard. In August, another sailor went overboard, was rescued, received medical treatment, and was transferred off-ship, as detailed by The Guardian. Eight sailors across the wider strike group—including the Lincoln crew, the carrier airwing, destroyer squadron staff, and escorting destroyers—attempted to take their lives.

Dismissing human wreckage as fake news and Washington convenience The official response was to shoot the messenger and cover the chart. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a member of the Senate's armed services committee, called the treatment of service members completely unacceptable. In a Wednesday statement reported by The Guardian, Gillibrand stated that what President Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as fake news turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members. Gillibrand added that the administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms, and billionaires, but cannot take care of the people who wear the cloth of the nation.

This institutional denial of deteriorating conditions during protracted deployments is the exact mechanism that defined the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011. Just as military command downplayed the insurgency and civilian casualties to protect a political timeline, today's Pentagon leadership dismisses broken desalination units, moldy showers, and mounting suicide attempts as dishonest media coverage. In August, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao released a statement acknowledging crew stresses while calling media coverage dishonest, even as he privately confirmed the eight suicide attempts to Congress.

The Pentagon stated there has not been an increase in suicide attempts and emphasized that five chaplains and multiple mental health professionals were on board. That is the classic institutional reflex: count the chaplains while ignoring the broken pipes and the 208 days without solid ground. A January 2025 study of 956 sailors found troops aboard US Navy ships suffer the highest rates of serious psychological distress compared to other branches, driven by poor habitability, noise, and schedules that leave inadequate time for sleep. When a sailor goes overboard in March and another goes overboard in August, that is not a chaplain deficit. That is a system failure built on endless war and administrative gaslighting.

The chart does not lie about who pays for the war We have walked this ward before. During the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse from 2003 to 2011, systemic failure in leadership and oversight during an extended combat deployment led to the total psychological breakdown and dehumanization of personnel. During the military suicide crisis from 2011 to 2016, a pattern of institutional denial kept veterans dying by their own hands while leaders pretended the statistics did not exist. And during the USS George Washington maintenance failures from 2014 to 2016, leadership ignored basic habitability and infrastructure on a carrier, mirroring the exact piping and desalination failures that poisoned life aboard the Lincoln.

The active-duty Navy recorded 356 suicide attempts in 2024 among an estimated 337,000 active-duty sailors, according to military data cited by the Times of India. A US military official told CNN that eight attempted attempts in a single strike group deployment is incredibly high compared to the usual one or two per year. The Lincoln finally docked in Thailand on September 2 and arrived in Guam later in the month, while the USS George Washington replaced it in August after a nine-month deployment. The ships rotate out, but the grinding gears of a war machine that views sailors as disposable fuel remain bolted in place.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao are wrong because they protected their political narrative while sailors tried to jump into the dark water of the Arabian Sea. You cannot pray away dysentery with an expeditionary facility dog, and you cannot gaslight families out of the fact that their children came home in body bags or psychiatric holds because the brass refused to end a deployment on time. The system broke those eight sailors, and the men who signed the deployment extensions are the ones who owe an accounting to the country.

8 Sailors in U.S.S. Lincoln Strike Group Attempted Suicide, Navy Says

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