In a combative face-to-face confrontation on Thursday night in San Diego, angry military families challenged the acting secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, over difficult conditions aboard the USS Lincoln as its combat mission against Iran stretches onward with no clear date to return home, according to two people who attended the in-person meeting.
Tensions boiled over again during a separate virtual meeting later that night between Navy leadership and family members of the 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln, according to audio and video recordings of the virtual meeting reviewed by MS NOW.
In both of those meetings, family members expressed concerns directly to Navy leaders about the well-being and safety of their loved ones after the aircraft carrier set a modern-day record during the ongoing Iran war for the most continuous days at sea.
Among the concerns brought up in the contentious meetings: the sailors’ mental health, safety on deck, a lack of supplies, food shortages, water contamination and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months.
Loved ones pleaded for information on when their sailors would return home. It remains a question that does not have any answer.
In the tense and fiery in-person town hall at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, Cao said that the Navy is preparing another carrier strike group — the USS Theodore Roosevelt — to deploy to the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln, according to two people who attended.
But Cao was unable to specify when that relief would come, citing operational security.
About 200 family members packed into a banquet room at the Island Club, a catering and event center on base, demanding answers from the acting secretary of the Navy. At times, spouses of sailors on the ship were in tears asking leaders what was being done to address issues of mental health and exhaustion, the two people who attended told MS NOW.
One parent said her daughter feels that she is never going to come home and believes she is going to die on the ship. Others asserted that the Navy had not done enough to take care of the sailors as they fight this war.
One woman questioned the mission and said she found it difficult to be proud of her sailor when she believed the military was “killing innocent civilians” and her sailor expressed guilt about what he was doing. Her comment was met with applause from the audience.
While the deployment of the Lincoln appears to have been extended for a second time, in both meetings Navy leaders emphasized the professionalism and grit of the sailors on board.
Vice Adm. Joseph Cahill and Vice Adm. Douglas Verissimo, the top commanders for Naval surface forces and Naval air forces for the Pacific Fleet, along with the senior enlisted leaders addressed the 200-plus attendees virtually Thursday night.
“I cannot even tell you how proud we are of them. They have executed with a level of precision and professionalism that just goes to the quality of our people that have chosen to put the cloth of our nation on our shoulder and answer this call,” Cahill told attendees, noting that the families are an important touchpoint for leadership to understand the challenges the sailors are facing.
As of Friday, the aircraft carrier had been on deployment for 259 days, after leaving its home port of San Diego on Nov. 21. The ship has only stopped twice, once in Guam in December and then July 7, when it briefly pulled into Oman — keeping the crew at sea for 208 continuous days.
After this deployment, the Lincoln and its sailors will be assigned to a different home port in Bremerton, Washington, from San Diego, which has left many of the families stuck in limbo as they wait to figure out when they should make the move north from California.
For now, Navy leaders say that there is a 58-day window for the families to move after the Lincoln comes back and that they are looking at Dec. 31 as a potential target for them to have a “time frame” of when that could happen.
The families expressed frustration that their loved ones were missing many once-in-a-lifetime events, including births of new children and funeral services for close relatives.
One spouse said they have a baby at home who was born during the Lincoln’s deployment.
“My husband has gotten no time with her,” the spouse said. The spouse acknowledged other attendees were feeling the same way, as many expressed their frustrations via the town hall’s virtual chat room, according to audio and video of the virtual meeting reviewed by MS NOW.
“We have friends that are on this boat as well that — they have yet to meet their children,” the spouse continued. “And I just think, like, a lot of us are kind of confused and just feeling frustrated that right now we’re in limbo of not having a date to come home.”
“I wish we could give that to you,” Verissimo responded. “We are working to finalize that, and I can’t … I look forward to the day when we can have at least a date window for home port, and that means they’re heading in the right direction. But we don’t have that right now.”
Verissimo acknowledged that long deployments seem to be becoming “more frequent” in the Navy, reflecting back to deployments during Covid-19, but he said he recognized that the circumstances are different, as the military is engaged in active fighting.
“We hear you loud and clear the impact this has on families, on service members, and the long-term ability of us to stand, sustain our forces’ health,” Cahill said.
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Priya Sridhar
Priya Sridhar is the Pentagon correspondent for MS NOW.
Lindsey Pipia
Lindsey Pipia is a White House producer for MS NOW.