Washington, DC – Poor planning or the harsh reality of war? Reported conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier during its record-breaking deployment have sparked the latest front of debate over how the administration of President Donald Trump is handling the US-Israeli war with Iran. The recent attention, experts told Al Jazeera, has underscored the limits of US naval might amidst a grinding stalemate and no apparent cessation of hostilities after nearly six months.
The situation has highlighted issues of resupply in a region where US military sites have been bombarded throughout the war; provoked questions over the navy’s constraints in a prolonged asymmetrical conflict; and added to growing signs of military strain that experts warn could harm US deterrence in other arenas.
‘The end state is that you will encounter readiness issues,’ Bradley Martin, a retired US Navy captain and senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told Al Jazeera. ‘The navy exists to project power, and it exists to fill gaps, but you do have to deal with the fact that there are limits,’ he said.
Unlike the reported shortages of both key offensive and defensive munitions stockpiles, the reported conditions on board the USS Lincoln have related to crew morale, shortages of basic supplies, and maintenance issues. Several family members have recounted concerns over loved ones’ wellbeing to US media, including troubling instances of personnel attempting to jump overboard.
Democratic lawmakers have charged that this has been a ‘pattern’ throughout the Trump administration’s leadership during the war, with similar conditions reported on the USS Gerald Ford, which was deployed for 326 days before its rotation in May, and the USS Lincoln, which has been deployed since November 2025, during which time it broke the naval record for the longest period without a port stop.
In a letter published on Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers charged the circumstances ‘leave both Congress and the public concerned that the Department is not adapting quickly enough to the conditions in the CENTCOM area of responsibility, nor taking the appropriate steps to mitigate the continued challenges in our fleet’. A widely circulated New York Times report has tied the supply shortages to Iranian attacks on US military sites in the Middle East, notably the heavy damage inflicted on the naval base in Bahrain in the early days of the war.
A US military official told the newspaper that the navy has been forced to use the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia as its main supply hub. The island is located about 3,540km (2,200 miles) away from where the USS Lincoln and a second aircraft carrier, the USS George HW Bush, have been operating near Iran.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Alexandru Hudisteanu, a maritime security expert and former Romanian naval officer, said the situation has underscored the burdens of US global power projection, which has long been based on its naval capacity, and in particular, its 11 active aircraft carriers.
Such carriers are the lynchpin of naval fleets, which typically include one cruiser, four to six destroyers, 75 aircraft, and 7,500 sailors and US Marines as part of a carrier strike group. ‘There’s a maxim that’s quite famous in the industry of military,’ Hudisteanu said. ‘They say that amateurs talk strategies, while professionals talk logistics.’
‘All these types of power projection assets, especially aircraft carriers, carry with them the burden of logistics,’ he said. ‘The logic of basing for the US was to never be more than a couple of days away from a resupply base somewhere. But with the base in Bahrain being out of order, the closest one is a little island somewhere 2,000 miles [3,220km] south of Iran.’
The Pentagon and White House have pushed back on the characterisation of conditions aboard the USS Lincoln as dire, instead acknowledging the demanding circumstances and austere environment to be expected in war.
Nevertheless, in the wake of the recent reports, acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao announced the aircraft carrier would soon return home. In its place, the USS George Washington, which has been primarily based in Japan, began travelling from the western Pacific to the Middle East.
The shift leaves no aircraft carrier in the western Pacific region, long a strategic priority for the US. The navy has not yet announced plans to replace the USS Washington.”
Ullman, a former naval officer and chairman of the Killowen Group advisory firm, agreed the reported conditions aboard the USS Lincoln, in part, reflect the demands of a prolonged conflict under an administration that appeared to believe the military campaign against Iran would be swift.
‘One of the things that we don’t realise is that Iran has now put two US naval aircraft carriers out of commission for what could be a year, the Ford and Lincoln,’ he said, noting that post-deployment refit periods typically take at least seven months, but are known to stretch on,” he said.
“So we’ve lost two aircraft carriers for a long period of time to fight this war,” he said.
Ullman linked the conditions on the aircraft carrier to the grinding nature of the conflict, reflecting the constraints of using air power alone to achieve US objectives.”
Despite degrading Iran’s limited navy and setting back its ballistic missile programme, military experts agree that any efforts to staunch Iran’s nuclear programme would likely require boots on the ground.”
The war with Iran has, in turn, led to a reckoning of US posture in the Middle East, and its constellation of bases largely established amid the ‘global war on terror’ in the early 2000s, she said.”
Source: Al Jazeera
