Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a letter dated September 22, 2026, that eight service members in the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group have attempted suicide during its deployment: “Since the beginning of Lincoln's deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group.” The count covers the carrier's crew, the air wing, the destroyer squadron staff and the escorting destroyers, between 6,000 and 7,000 sailors by CNN's count and about 7,500 by NBC's. No one died by suicide during the deployment, Cao wrote.
The Lincoln left San Diego in November 2025. Its deployment was supposed to end in May and was extended after the Iran war began in February; the carrier went 286 days without a port call, NBC reported, and CNN described its time at sea as a modern record. It left the Middle East in August, stopped in Thailand in early September and is sailing home. The letter describes one attempt, a sailor who “attempted to go overboard in March and was stopped by his shipmates,” and confirms that a sailor from the air wing went overboard in early August and was recovered.
The number arrived after months in which the administration waved off the families' concerns. In August the Navy said, “Based on information available to the command, we have not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said conditions had been “completely misrepresented.” Asked on August 14 whether families' worries about their relatives' mental health were justified, Trump said, “No, they're not,” and asked whether eight and a half months at sea was too long: “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.” Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, called the concerns “old news” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, NBC reported.
Whether eight is unusually high is disputed, and the record supports both readings. CNN calculated that the strike group's rate was roughly consistent with the active-duty Navy's in 2024, when there were 356 suicide attempts among about 337,000 sailors. A U.S. military official told CNN, “Eight attempted suicides is incredibly high,” noting that recent strike group deployments have had one or two a year, and added, “The strain of combat ops is much higher than normal deployments. No port calls, constant alerts, etc.” A U.S. official had earlier told CNN that the Navy does not believe there is a correlation between deployment length and thoughts of self-harm.
The carrier deployed with five chaplains, one psychologist, one clinical social worker, three behavioral health technicians and an embedded prevention counselor, Cao wrote. Only the psychologist and the social worker are licensed mental health clinicians, Navy Times noted, and a sailor told it that wait times to see one could last weeks for anyone not experiencing suicidal ideation. Gillibrand: “What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as 'fake news' turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members.” The food shortages on the same deployment are covered in Sailors Enforcing Trump's Iran Blockade Are Going Hungry as 'USS Hunger Games' Photos Go Viral.