I served onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln back in the late 90s. This hits close to home for me.
Multiple sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have attempted to go overboard as the carrier's deployment stretches into its ninth month.
www.militarytimes.com
Lincoln has been on deployment for nine months. While the standard has always been six months, longer deployments are not unheard of. What IS unheard of, though, is the number of consecutive days at sea without a port call the crew of the Lincoln have endured: Around 260 days. And they've been doing this without fresh food and basic hygiene supplies. Even cleaning supplies are in short supply, leading to mold buildup in the showers, clogged and broken toilets, and worse.
The Lincoln, as with every other aircraft carrier in current service, has a lot of creature comforts that makes a deployment less arduous. But none of that equipment was designed to handle heavy continuous use for such a long period of time without repairs. Things like washing machines have broken down leading to further degradation of quality of life aboard the carrier.
Then there are the working hours. Most sailors work 12-hour shifts seven days a week. But many - particularly those responsible for operating and maintaining the ship's propulsion systems, power plants, and other essential utilities, work 6-on, 6-off, meaning they get very little continuous sleep.
All of this can be hard to deal with when you're on a standard deployment with a known end date, marked with occasional port visits. But take that deployment, take away all port visits, and extend it indefinitely, and run out of everything that makes deployed life bearable, and you've got the perfect recipe for a morale meltdown.
Fuck this entire Trump administration! Pete Hegseth needs to be fired.
Out of a cannon.
Into a brick wall.