USS George Washington Heads to Middle East as Sailors on USS Abraham Lincoln Report 250-Plus Days at Sea Without a Port Call

The USS George Washington is steaming toward the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose crew has spent more than 250 consecutive days at sea without a single port call, according to The Wall Street Journal and lawmakers briefed on the deployment.

The Washington recently departed Da Nang, Vietnam, and has since transited the Singapore Strait and the Strait of Malacca en route to the Indian Ocean, according to U.S. Navy statements. U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal the swap is part of a previously planned rotation, not a direct response to the reports coming off the Lincoln.

The roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln left San Diego on November 21 for what was originally billed as a Pacific deployment. It got redirected to the Middle East after the U.S. war with Iran started on February 28, according to Times of India. Lawmakers say the ship has now gone more than 200 straight days without docking anywhere.

Families describe a crew pushed to the edge

Relatives of Lincoln sailors have told reporters about deteriorating morale, supply shortages, and plumbing problems aboard the carrier. More seriously, there are reports of multiple sailors attempting to go overboard, with at least one reportedly stopped by a fellow crew member before going into the water, according to Times of India.

Roughly 200 relatives confronted acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and senior commanders at a meeting in San Diego, demanding answers about when their family members would come home and why conditions had gotten so bad.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed back on the reporting. "Allegations of poor living conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East have been completely misrepresented," Hegseth said, according to Fox News. "We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody."

Extended deployments are not new to naval history. Ships get diverted when wars break out, and a defense secretary standing behind his sailors' leadership chain is not automatically covering something up. Two hundred days without a port call is an extraordinary stretch even by wartime standards, and family accounts of suicidal ideation and overboard attempts are not something "misrepresented" framing alone resolves. No investigation into the Lincoln's conditions has been announced, and no findings have been released to confirm or refute the family accounts beyond what relatives and lawmakers have described publicly.

A new drone task force stands up as the carrier swap unfolds

The carrier rotation is happening alongside a separate expansion of U.S. military posture in the region. U.S. Central Command announced Thursday the launch of Task Force Falcon Strike, described as the first-ever multi-domain, multinational attack drone task force, according to CENTCOM statements reported by Gulf News, The National and Fox News.

Falcon Strike will operate one-way attack drones "above, on, and below the sea," staffed by both U.S. personnel and regional partner forces, CENTCOM said. It builds on Task Force Scorpion Strike, stood up nine months earlier as the U.S. military's first dedicated one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East. Scorpion Strike already carried out a series of firsts, including launching an aerial attack drone from a Navy warship last December and using unmanned attack vessels in strikes on Iranian port facilities in July, according to Gulf News.

"Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike's success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners," said CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper. "We are collectively stronger when we integrate and deploy new capabilities together."

CENTCOM said it has begun formally inviting regional partners to join, with the goal of building a unified, multinational drone deterrent across the Middle East. Special Operations Command Central, based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, will lead the effort.

Iran's response and the wider picture

Fox News reported separately that Iran's central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, said Tehran will soon join the BRICS-founded New Development Bank, seeking financial partnerships outside Western-controlled institutions as U.S. sanctions and the war with Iran continue to squeeze its economy. Iran still needs to complete the bank's onboarding process before gaining access, Fox News noted.

The bigger unresolved question sits with the Lincoln. The Navy has not said publicly when the carrier will actually return to San Diego, and no timeline for the Washington's arrival on station has been confirmed. Congress has not announced any hearing or formal inquiry into the deployment length or the reported overboard incidents as of this writing.