{"id":1014568,"date":"2026-08-21T08:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T08:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1014568\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T08:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T08:35:12","slug":"uss-lincoln-headed-home-after-replacement-ship-arrives-in-middle-east-nbc-7-san-diego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1014568\/","title":{"rendered":"USS Lincoln headed home after replacement ship arrives in Middle East \u2013 NBC 7 San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"

You are watching NBC San Diego 24\/7 News in the player above, which includes today’s top stories, weather and more. <\/p>\n

San Diego-based USS Abraham Lincoln is on its way home after a historic deployment that included more than 200 consecutive days at sea and reports of mental health challenges and shortages aboard while it was supporting\u00a0the Iran war.<\/p>\n

A U.S. official told NBC News USS Lincoln has been sailing home for a few days and will be back in San Diego in a few weeks. The Lincoln was relieved by the\u00a0Asia-based USS George Washington\u00a0aircraft carrier was now operating in the Middle East, U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said Thursday.<\/p>\n

The move comes as concerns have grown about\u00a0the Lincoln’s lengthy deployment, which has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than nearly 275 days, and about reports of crew stress and poor mental health, as well as supply shortages, including food and hygiene products.<\/p>\n

Several Democratic lawmakers have pressed the Department of Defense for accountability over conditions aboard the Lincoln, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said were \u201ccompletely misrepresented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth spoke with the Lincoln\u2019s crew last week, and Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, visited this past weekend. In an editorial published Sunday by The Wall Street Journal, Cooper said the crew \u201cdelivered a performance for the ages, and now you are going home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extended deployments of carriers wear on service members who are away from home for long periods and increase strain on the ship and its equipment. While renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran calmed in recent weeks, the Navy is enforcing a\u00a0reimposed blockade on Iranian ports\u00a0in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration has offered no clarity on\u00a0how it intends to wind down the war.<\/p>\n

Hegseth has said the U.S. can maintain the blockade \u201cindefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump this week downplayed reports<\/a> about conditions on the Lincoln, which left its homeport in San Diego in November and arrived in the Middle East in January. Trump called the nearly nine months at sea that the sailors endured a \u201cgood period of time\u201d but added that \u201cover the years, we\u2019ve had them out there much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters Monday that he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for \u201cmuch longer.\u201d Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is \u201cbeautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.\u201d Trump did not name the admiral.<\/p>\n

In a statement Sunday after visiting the Lincoln, Cooper praised the carrier’s leaders for prioritizing mental health and resilience.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n

The Washington joins the USS George H.W. Bush in the Middle East, leaving Asia without an American carrier strike group at a time when China has shown more signs of aggression.<\/p>\n

The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the\u00a0open-ended operations with Iran\u00a0are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and\u00a0focuses on the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You are watching NBC San Diego 24\/7 News in the player above, which includes today’s top stories, weather…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1014569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,5502,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,267066],"class_list":["post-1014568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-navy","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-war-with-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117132586327265855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}