Eight sailors in the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group attempted suicide during the carrier's extended Iran war deployment. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao confirmed the attempts in a Sept. 23 letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
The disclosure, first reported by CNN on Wednesday, Sept. 23, lands close to home for Everett. Naval Station Everett employs 6,000 military personnel and 500 civilians, and USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53), an Everett-homeported destroyer, was independently deployed in the Arabian Sea region as of Sept. 14, according to USNI News fleet tracking data.
The Lincoln itself is homeported at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. But the strike group's deployment is the first confirmed account of multiple suicide attempts during the Navy's extended Iran war operations, which have kept roughly 50,000 American service members in the region.
What the letter says
Cao sent the letter to Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in response to her questions about crew welfare. He wrote that the eight attempts spanned the full strike group: the Lincoln crew, carrier air wing, destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons.
None resulted in death.
The Lincoln carried between 2,500 and 2,800 sailors at any given time, according to the letter. CNN reported the full strike group across roughly a half dozen ships comprised 6,000 to 7,000 sailors.
An unnamed U.S. military official told CNN that eight attempts is "incredibly high," noting recent carrier strike group deployments have seen one or two per year. The official attributed the higher number to combat operations, no port calls and constant alerts.
A record-setting deployment
The Lincoln left San Diego in November 2025 for what was planned as a routine six-month Pacific deployment. It was redirected to the Middle East in January 2026 after the war with Iran began. As of Friday, Sept. 25, the carrier had been deployed 308 days and was underway after a two-day stop in Guam, according to USNI News.
The ship docked in Thailand in early September with a record 286 days at sea. The strike group has since left the Middle East, replaced by the USS George Washington, and is heading back to California.
Cao's letter also confirmed that a sailor went overboard in early August and was quickly recovered. A separate sailor attempted to go overboard in March and was stopped by shipmates, then returned to homeport for care.
Conditions aboard
Cao wrote that the Lincoln deployed with a psychologist, a clinical social worker, a counselor, three behavioral health technicians, five chaplains and a therapy dog. He acknowledged a piping issue aboard the ship, delays in scheduled resupply shipments and that meal options were cut from two to one during high-tempo operations. All three problems were resolved, and the Navy prioritized delivery of hygiene products, according to the letter.
The Navy recorded 356 suicide attempts service-wide in 2024, the last year of publicly available data, according to Navy records cited by ABC News. That figure represented a nearly 50% increase over three years.
Political response
President Donald Trump said in August that the Lincoln had not been deployed "nearly long enough." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in August that accounts of sailors struggling through the deployment had been "completely misrepresented."
Gillibrand, in a statement responding to Cao's letter, called the situation "completely unacceptable." She said what Trump and Hegseth had "dismissed as 'fake news'" turned out to be "serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members."
Dr. Harold Kudler, a former national lead for mental health services at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told the Associated Press that the situation demands scrutiny. "… Something happened to get those families upset," Kudler said. "It reverberated through the military and reverberated across the country."
What's next locally
No Everett-based official has publicly addressed the Lincoln suicide disclosures. Naval Station Everett Commanding Officer Capt. Stacy Wuthier is scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Station update at 11 a.m. Oct. 15, hosted by the Economic Alliance Snohomish County.
The war with Iran is nearing its eighth month. Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed and more than 800 wounded since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
