Sailor went overboard on USS Lincoln last month
Sailor went overboard on USS Lincoln last month
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Keeping morale high on ships the size of US Navy aircraft carriers presents problems that smaller warships may not face, even in times of combat, experienced naval officers say.
Reports have surfaced this week of mental health concerns aboard the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as its crew endures more than 200 days without a port call during operations against Iran.
A sailor was rescued after going overboard earlier this month off of the Lincoln, officials said. The sailor was not injured, and the Navy considered the incident a mental health episode, according to one official.
With more than 5,000 people aboard, keeping them all unified and focused as one team is difficult in a ship larger than some small towns, said Jennifer Parker, a former Royal Australian Navy officer and nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute.
Parker served on Australian destroyers, with a crew of around 200, a size that enabled to commanding officer and executive officer to know the entire ship’s company personally, she said.
But top officers can’t have that kind of relationship with 5,000 sailors, she said.
“I think that would be a much harder leadership proposition on a carrier,” let alone a carrier in wartime conditions, Parker said.
Former US Navy Capt. Carl Schuster, who served three tours on the Lincoln’s sister ship, the USS Nimitz, in the late 1970s and 1980s, said life aboard can be isolating, especially for enlisted crew who work deep inside the 100,000-ton carriers.
“I was an officer, so my work was more mentally than physically focused, and I was out on bridge wings and flight deck several times a day,” Schuster told CNN.
“The enlisted troops in the engineering spaces and combat systems spend much of the day doing physically as well as mentally stressful things without seeing the sun. That affects them in ways I never experienced,” he said.
Schuster said even in non-wartime conditions, mental health is a concern.
On each of his three deployments aboard the Nimitz, including two with at least 80 days straight at sea, at least two crew attempted suicide, he said.
“We all have a breaking point, and you don’t see it until it happens to you or someone else,” Schuster said.
On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth defended the Navy’s record on supporting its sailors.
“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” he said.