After nearly six months in a fast-paced, unplanned war with Iran, the parts onboard the Navy’s aircraft carriers are at risk of wearing out. That includes the plumbing and air-conditioning systems, catapults that launch fighter jets and the gear that catches the planes slamming to a halt on the floating runway.
Retired senior Navy leaders are raising concerns over the wear and tear the unexpected record-breaking deployments have on the $22 billion carriers, the expensive aircraft they transport around the world and the badly needed extended maintenance time it will take to repair them.
“We are excessively wearing out our ships,” said Brent Sadler, a retired Navy captain and senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation. “The longer that you’re working them hard at sea,” he said, the longer the Navy needs to put “a lot of time” into maintenance when the ships are not available for deployments.
That is the challenge facing the USS Abraham Lincoln, which the Navy is preparing to rush back to its home port of San Diego after operating at a blistering tempo launching missions against Iran and protecting U.S. bases and allies in the Middle East.
The USS Lincoln hit a modern-day record for most continuous days at sea, 208, without a port call and is on track to potentially surpass the longest deployment of a modern aircraft carrier that was set earlier this year by the USS Gerald R. Ford at 326 days.
Family members whose sailors work on the USS Lincoln’s flight deck have told MS NOW they are worried about the damage to the arresting cables that land jets and wear and tear to the flight deck itself.
Other family members said their loved ones described toilets in certain zones of the USS Lincoln being broken for extended periods of time and a lack of hot water. Family members were granted anonymity to recount sensitive conversations.
Family members, according to audio and video recordings reviewed by MS NOW of a tense virtual town hall meeting in San Diego on Aug. 6, also told Navy leaders that their loved ones described air-conditioning outages and expressed concerns about potential water contamination from jet fuel onboard the Lincoln.
The Lincoln “remains fully capable of meeting all mission tasking,” Cmdr. Joseph Hontz, the spokesperson for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, told MS NOW in a statement.
The deployment has been “challenging for the crew and their equipment,” Hontz said, adding that the deck of the USS Lincoln has seen more than 10,000 aircraft sorties in eight months. But, Hontz said, there are no holes in the flight deck and the crew has been able to repair the expected wear and tear when needed.
Lengthy deployments and delayed maintenance have a ripple effect through the fleet.
In previous back-to-back extended deployments of aircraft carriers, inspection teams found equipment needed more work than anticipated, according to Bryan Clark, a retired Navy commander who worked in naval operations and is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
That unplanned work meant a longer maintenance period than planned, with repair times doubling from the normal seven or eight months to a year or year and a half. Carriers caught up in maintenance then prevent other carriers from leaving deployment for their maintenance period, extending their time at sea.
It is a type of “maintenance debt” that Clark argues takes years to pay back.
“You get this cascading set of delays as everybody’s waiting in line to get their turn in the dry dock or at the pier in the shipyard, which means there’s fewer carriers for deployment, and then the few carriers that are available, they get worked harder,” Clark said.
Those swelling maintenance demands lead to longer deployments, and longer deployments have been “normalized,” said the retired Navy captain Sadler. “And they should never be normalized.”
The Navy office of public affairs did not return requests for comment about delayed maintenance leading to longer deployments.
Typically, aircraft carriers stop at a friendly port every 30 to 45 days on a standard deployment, which is usually six to seven months long.
Not only do the port calls give the sailors and Marines on the ship an opportunity to rest and for the ship to get resupplied, but it also gives engineers and mechanics, either from the uniformed crew or contractors, the chance to address any repairs or maintenance that needs to be done to keep the ship safe and efficient.
While there are several enlisted rates in the Navy from electricians to machinists to technicians who can address problems at sea, the port calls are also necessary to give the crew and the contractors more time, when the ship is not engaged in combat operations, to focus on any bigger issues.
According to U.S. Navy 2026 Fighting Instructions from the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s 300 ships should be following the rules of thirds: “Every day, around a third are deployed, and another third are in deep maintenance. The last third are neither deployed nor in maintenance. In theory, this group is either in the workup phase (training, readying to deploy) or the sustainment phase (post-deployment, maintaining a ready state).”
At any given time, anywhere from three to four of the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers are deployable, which means they have finished their maintenance and training periods and are ready to be utilized at sea. Already, four different aircraft carriers have been used to support Trump’s war with Iran.
The USS Ford and the USS Lincoln were in the Middle East when the United States first launched airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
Later, the USS George H.W. Bush deployed to the region to relieve the USS Ford, and now the USS George Washington is moving toward the waters off Iran to potentially relieve the USS Lincoln. Navy leaders have maintained that the U.S. needs at least two aircraft carriers in the Middle East to support the airstrikes on Iran and impose the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Utilizing so many aircraft carriers for one mission has caused the Indo-Pacific region to be left without a carrier as the USS Washington has now been sent from Japan to potentially relieve the beleaguered USS Lincoln.
While this has happened in the past, former Navy leaders warn that it is leaving the U.S. and its regional Asian allies vulnerable to potential threats from China, Russia and North Korea. Having an aircraft carrier based in Japan, which the U.S. has had since 1973, allows it to respond to the region 17 days faster than if it sent an aircraft carrier from the U.S.
The Navy has plans to add aircraft carriers to the fleet. But it takes anywhere from 10 to 15 years to order, design, procure and construct an aircraft carrier, so building up the fleet will take time.
The Navy has authorized three additional Ford-class aircraft carriers that have not begun construction: the USS Doris Miller, the USS William J Clinton and the USS George W. Bush. There are also two more aircraft carriers that are currently under construction, the USS Enterprise and the USS John F. Kennedy.
“If Congress members are serious about trying to do better for the sailors, they need more ships. It’s as simple as that,” said Sadler. “Because the world is a very dangerous place, getting more dangerous.”
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