“I stepped onto the USS Abraham Lincoln on July 7 at the Duqm port in Oman, just as the war with Iran was escalating again. I hadn’t even finished my first walk-through on the aircraft carrier when I learned that Iran hit a third tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and that US Central Command”, — write on: www.cnn.com
I stepped onto the USS Abraham Lincoln on July 7 at the Duqm port in Oman, just as the war with Iran was escalating again. I hadn’t even finished my first walk-through on the aircraft carrier when I learned that Iran hit a third tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and that US Central Command, which is carrying out the Pentagon’s war strategy, was gearing up to respond. I did my first live shot from the flight deck within an hour of boarding. “Your timing is impeccable,” one official messaged me.
What struck me was how little the crisis — which has led to the deaths of 18 US service members since it began in February — registered onboard. The next day was a “no fly day,” giving the crew downtime to reset after their short port visit. In the news while they did: US strikes on Iran from other naval assets, rising rhetoric on both sides as a tentative peace agreement between the US and Iran crumbled. At breakfast at 6 a.m. in the cafeteria (known as the mess deck), top enlisted crew members were remarkably calm. Most hadn’t been following the news, even with Wi-Fi onboard. They’d seen this cycle — escalation, then de-escalation — enough times that this felt routine, not alarming.
I’m writing this because a lot of the recent coverage of the Lincoln has centered on poor conditions and mental health struggles — and those stories are real and they matter. I didn’t get to see every nook and cranny of the ship, or talk to all of the roughly 5,000 crew members, though the Navy allowed us to roam freely for the most part with an escort and talk to whomever we wanted. We also pushed to see as much as we could in the short amount of time that we had.
Three days onboard the Lincoln, and dozens of conversations with sailors — both officers and enlisted — showed me something messier than a single narrative: genuine hardship alongside genuine resilience, sometimes in the same person, sometimes in the same sentence.
CNN recently reported that the Lincoln may break a record for a US carrier’s longest trip away from its home port, a nearly nine-month deployment that has prompted concerns from family members amid reports of instances of suicide ideation and crew members being rescued from the water.