The United States has pulled its last aircraft carrier out of the western Pacific, leaving the region without an American flattop for the first time in years as President Donald Trump’s war against Iran continues to stretch the Navy’s fleet to its limits. The USS George Washington departed its port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, this past weekend and is now steaming toward the Middle East, where it is expected to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, a carrier whose record-breaking deployment has become the subject of mounting congressional scrutiny and reports of severe crew distress.
A Carrier Swap Born of Crisis
The Lincoln left its home port of San Diego last November and was originally scheduled to return by May, but its deployment has been extended twice to support U.S. operations against Iran, now in its sixth month. The carrier, which has more than 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard, has not made a port call in more than 200 days, a modern-day record for consecutive days at sea, according to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
The George Washington, the Navy’s only forward-deployed carrier and based out of Yokosuka, Japan, is now the sole carrier available to be redirected to the region. A Navy official confirmed the move to Stars and Stripes after it was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, and the carrier strike group completed a port visit in Vietnam on August 5 before continuing on toward the Arabian Sea, a journey expected to take about a week.
The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may prove temporary if the Navy deploys another vessel in the coming months, but analysts say the swap illustrates how the open-ended operations against Iran are wearing down American sailors while the Trump administration pulls further back from the Asia-Pacific region even as it has said the area remains a top priority behind only the Western Hemisphere.
“The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adding that the U.S. is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously stated goal of reducing its footprint in the Middle East. Poling said American allies in the Pacific have grown unsettled by the unpredictability of the administration, while Beijing “is quite happy with U.S. distraction, with the frustration of U.S. allies and partners.”
Beijing’s Opening
China views the American military presence in the region as a threat to its ambitions to seize self-governing Taiwan, which it claims as its own, though Washington has long argued the Pacific is too economically vital to abandon. No analyst expects China to invade Taiwan simply because a carrier has left the region, but Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said the carrier’s absence hands Beijing another opportunity to project strength.
“They’re using this as part of the narrative to demonstrate to the Philippines, to Japan, to Indonesia and others that the U.S. is not the big dog in the western Pacific anymore,” Clark said. “They would just prefer that countries in the region decide that China is the bigger power and the U.S. is not able to guarantee their security anymore.”
China conducted naval exercises this week with Indonesia and has recently shown signs of aggression toward two other key U.S. allies with competing territorial claims in the region. Beijing carried out military drills this month near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, which both China and the Philippines claim, and last month a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted a live-fire exercise off Japan’s southernmost island of Okinotori.
Adm. Frank Bradley, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, has been working to reassure regional allies of Washington’s continued commitment. He was in Manila on Thursday, telling Filipino counterparts that U.S. special operations forces are ready to expand joint exercises to strengthen the alliance, and he is also expected to travel to Japan. Evan Sankey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute who focuses on U.S.-China policy, said carriers provide a psychological assurance to allies that their absence undercuts, adding that it “adds to the general sense that the U.S. is distracted by events in the Middle East.”
Record-Breaking Deployment Fuels Alarm
Trump has leaned heavily on aircraft carriers to support military operations throughout his second term. The USS Gerald R. Ford returned home in mid-May after an 11-month deployment, the longest since the Vietnam War, during which it supported both the fight against Iran and the capture of Venezuela’s former leader, Nicolás Maduro. The Ford was forced to turn around and return to the Mediterranean for repairs after a fire broke out in a laundry space, leaving hundreds of sailors without places to sleep.
The Lincoln’s ordeal has proven more severe. Since leaving San Diego, the carrier was first sent to support military operations in Venezuela before being redirected to the Middle East as Operation Epic Fury began in late February. It has now spent more than 265 consecutive days at sea, and reports from Navy Times and Stars and Stripes this month cited multiple family members describing declining mental health and morale among the crew, including instances of suicidal ideation. Navy Times reported on the record with Annabelle Loma, the wife of a sailor aboard the Lincoln, who said her husband had attempted to jump overboard amid what she described as severe burnout. Another spouse, Maria Rodriguez, said her husband told her he had intervened when a shipmate was “preparing to go overboard.”
A U.S. sailor went overboard from the carrier on August 3, prompting a search-and-rescue operation before the sailor was recovered. Families have also described moldy showers, sporadic hot water, rationed meals and soap, broken toilets, and grueling 12- to 16-hour shifts without days off.
Warships and their crews can only handle so much strain, said Robert Farley, who teaches national security and diplomacy at the University of Kentucky and frequently writes about aircraft carriers. “People don’t get enough rest. It’s psychologically exhausting. And R&R is part of keeping the crew healthy,” Farley said. “Sometimes it’s framed as, ‘These people haven’t had a vacation.’ But we are dealing with well-known limits on the capacity of a crew to operate at top efficiency over time. And that just declines.”
Congress Presses the Pentagon
The reports prompted Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to send a letter this month to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao demanding accountability. Blumenthal wrote that the Lincoln has been “continuously at sea for a record length” of time and cited “widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns” and disruptions to the mail system that left care packages lost in transit for months. He wrote that “the Lincoln’s extended deployment raises broader questions about the Navy’s ability to sustainably generate carrier forces while preserving servicemember well-being, maintenance schedules, fleet readiness and the capacity to respond to future contingencies.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., joined Blumenthal the following day in demanding “an official oversight visit with the bipartisan Senate Delegation to the USS Lincoln to investigate the reported alarming conditions.” In a post on X, Gallego, who has served in active duty himself, wrote that “the stories of crew members threatening to jump off the ship are a frightening alarm bell as to how bad the situation has become: moldy showers, sporadic hot water, rationed meals and soap, broken toilets, and grueling 12- to 16-hour shifts with no days off.” Gallego added that “the way [President Trump] is treating our service members as he carries out this illegal war is not just disgusting, it’s dangerous.”
U.S. Central Command has disputed the characterization of conditions aboard the carrier, stating that the Lincoln “has maintained among the highest crew reenlistment rates (84.4%) of all aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy” and that “the Sailors and Marines of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group remain resilient and resolved after more than 260 days at sea, 10,000 aircraft flights, and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance expended.” CENTCOM added that “no service members aboard the aircraft carrier have died, and the one Sailor who fell overboard Aug. 3 was quickly and safely recovered,” calling reports of sailors jumping ship “rampant misreporting” that is “disrespectful” to those serving aboard. A separate U.S. official told NewsNation there had been no observed increase in “suicidal ideations or attempts” on the vessel.
The Navy’s Carrier Math
Clark, of the Hudson Institute, said the strain on the fleet stems from a lack of preparation for a prolonged Iran conflict. “If we were going to mobilize to do this kind of conflict, and we anticipated it might go this long, we might have done some changes to the carrier schedule to make sure more would be available,” Clark said. He noted the Navy has 11 aircraft carriers and typically deploys two or three at a time, but that number could soon reach four if the USS Theodore Roosevelt leaves San Diego for the Middle East, which would eventually allow the Washington to return to the Pacific.
That relief will not come without cost, Clark said, since the carriers will eventually need maintenance at the nation’s only two carrier shipyards. “We’ll end up with a maintenance debt that needs to be paid for the next few years,” he said. “We’ll probably have less carrier presence than we’ve had in the previous years because carriers will be lined up to get into the shipyard.”
A Broader Debate Over Carriers Themselves
Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute’s East Asia Program, said the episode raises longer-term questions about the future utility of aircraft carriers as warfare rapidly evolves. Carriers, he said, can be more easily targeted by drones and missiles from an adversary such as China, while smaller ships and submarines can strike targets as effectively as the fighter jets that launch from a carrier deck.
Even top Navy officials have signaled a desire to move away from heavy reliance on the massive warships. Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, told The Associated Press in February that he wants to convince commanders to lean on smaller, newer ships and other assets rather than consistently turning to carriers. For now, though, the Pentagon has not confirmed whether the George Washington will officially replace the Lincoln, and it remains unclear if or when another carrier will be deployed to backfill the Pacific.