8 sailors attached to USS Lincoln have attempted suicide, acting Navy secretary says
Eight U.S. Navy personnel attached to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group have attempted suicide since the start of their extended deployment tied to the war in Iran, according to a letter ABC News obtained from Acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao.
In the letter, sent to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Tuesday, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cao says that there have been eight suicide attempts since the USS Lincoln's deployment began around 10 months ago.
"Since the beginning of LINCOLN's deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group -- this number includes the LINCOLN crew and Sailors from the carrier air wing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers, and all embarked aviation squadrons," Cao wrote in response to questions from Gillibrand about the health and wellbeing of the personnel aboard the fleet.
The letter was first reported by CNN.
A Navy official told ABC News that while they treat every attempted suicide case very seriously, they maintain the number is not out of the norm for a long deployment.
Throughout the deployment, the Lincoln had between 2,500 and 2,800 sailors aboard, according to Cao's letter. Eight attempts among that population of sailors appear to be roughly consistent with Navy records for suicide attempts in the broader Navy ranks.
The Navy recorded 356 suicide attempts in 2024, that last year of publicly available data. Over three years, the figure represents a nearly 50% increase in attempted suicides, according to Navy records.
Navy Capt. John Cordle (Ret.), who commanded warships in a strike group, said that a long, open-ended deployment with extensions and no port calls takes a toll on sailors. Ships in the Middle East typically made port calls at the Naval station in Bahrain, which Cordle said offered a "psychological benefit."
Those facilities, which have come under attack from Iran, have made anchoring there impossible.
"I think we are in unknown territory," said Cordle, who studied workplace stress in the Navy and has written about service members' mental health.
"We really haven't deployed ships for this long since Vietnam, and we learned lessons then about ship maintenance and about retention and mental health that seem to have been forgotten ... My sense is that we are in uncharted waters, and we don't know what we don't know."
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have dismissed reports of poor conditions and mental health issues aboard the USS Lincoln. Cao confirmed that a sailor went overboard in early August from the Lincoln and was quickly recovered.
In his letter, Cao confirmed a piping issue aboard the USS Lincoln and that meal options were reduced from two to one during periods of higher-tempo operations, but that both issues were resolved.
Despite the USS Lincolns' record-long deployment, Trump said in August that the vessel hasn't been deployed for "nearly long enough." Hegseth in August pushed back on reports of a sailor going overboard from the Lincoln and accounts of sailors struggling through an unusually long deployment have been "completely misrepresented."
Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said in an August social media post that "the Lincoln currently has among the lowest number of cases related to mental health" among the Navy's 11 active aircraft carriers. Cooper also acknowledged in the post that it "doesn’t mean that all is perfect" and that a long deployment at sea "is uniquely challenging and tough, and every single one of us, including me, reacts to stressors in different ways."
In a statement to ABC News, Sen. Gillibrand said Trump and Hegseth dismissed concerns that "turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members." Gillibrand called the treatment of service members under the Trump administration "completely unacceptable."
The ship was slated for a normal six-month deployment to the Pacific but had been extended on an unusually long deployment due to the war with Iran, where it was redirected earlier this year.
The president initially estimated the war in Iran would last four to six weeks. Instead it's nearing its eighth month and 50,000 American service members remain deployed in the region. Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed and over 800 wounded since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
The Lincoln Strike group left the Middle East late last month -- replaced by the USS George Washington -- and is en route to its home port in California. The ship docked in Thailand earlier this month with a record 286 days at sea.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
ABC News' Chris Boccia contributed to this report.
