Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, spoke highly of crew members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Sunday amid reports that the sailors may be struggling with mental health and other problems.
The vessel has been at sea for more than 260 days and has played a key role in the U.S. war against Iran over the past nearly six months. The USS George Washington is en route to the Middle East to relieve the aircraft carrier from its extended deployment.
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After meeting with sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln on Saturday, Cooper said his visit was “awe-inspiring” as he saw the service members demonstrate “camaraderie, teamwork and resilience.” He also noted how the Lincoln “has among the lowest number of cases related to mental health” of all 11 active U.S. aircraft carriers.
That said, Cooper cautioned that not “all is perfect.”
“Find any of the nearly 4 million Navy veterans in America today and they will likely tell you that service at sea for long periods isn’t for everyone,” the CENTCOM commander said in a statement. “It is uniquely challenging and tough, and every single one of us, including me, reacts to stressors in different ways.”
“I’ve long believed that mental health is another aspect of individual health and requires our attention just like physical health and spiritual health,” he added. “I applaud Lincoln’s leadership — the senior enlisted leaders in the Chief Petty Officers Mess in particular — for stepping up and making mental health and crew resilience a leadership priority.”
Apart from mental health, there have been growing concerns around the vessel’s supply shortages, water contamination, plumbing problems, and deck safety.
Military families have raised these concerns with the administration, but President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have been dismissive of the reports. Trump downplayed the length of the nearly nine-month deployment, while Hegseth said the situation was “completely misrepresented” in the media.
During a Sunday interview with CBS News’s Face the Nation, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) took issue with the president’s statement, saying he should have been more understanding of the families’ concerns. The House Republican also called for congressional oversight, suggesting he would like to hear from acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and other military officials about the matter.
When he served aboard an aircraft carrier in the Air Force 30 years ago, Bacon said he saw the mental toll that extended deployments took on service members, which resulted in some suicide attempts during his time there. The Lincoln has not returned to port for more than 200 days, pushing the crew members to their limits.
Cooper visited the Lincoln as part of his 10-day trip to the Middle East amid boiling tensions with Iran. The admiral commended the warship’s crew members for their dedication and courage.
“The Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is a strong team of high-achieving Americans standing tall with immense, justified pride in everything they accomplished,” Cooper said in a previous statement. “History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era.”
