Defense Department pushes back, says attempt numbers have not risen
A Tuesday letter from Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., detailed two specific overboard incidents during the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group’s record-long Middle East deployment. In early August, a rescue helicopter from the Abraham Lincoln pulled a service member serving in the carrier’s air wing from the sea after the sailor “went overboard.” In a separate incident in March, crew members stopped another sailor who was attempting to do the same thing, according to the letter.
Cao’s letter said eight crew members in the strike group attempted suicide during the more than 250-day at-sea period. None of the approximately 6,000 sailors serving on the carrier, its air wing and the destroyers guarding it succeeded in taking their own life.
The Defense Department pushed back against the characterization of conditions aboard the carrier, saying the number of suicide attempts had not risen and that counselors, chaplains and other support resources were available to service members.
The Navy’s former top lawyer, Rear Admiral Donald Guter, characterized the eight suicide attempts as “a disturbingly high number indicating a serious stress level.”
Cao acknowledged the broader problem in a video posted online over the weekend, saying, “We must confront the rising tide of suicide head-on.”
The deployment, which began in November, kept the carrier at sea as part of the U.S. conflict with Iran. Reports during the deployment documented food and supply shortages aboard the carrier, as well as plumbing problems, while family members of crew members flagged concerns about declines in the mental health of those on board.
Cao’s letter came in response to months of pressure from Gillibrand, a New York Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Gillibrand rebuked President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday for downplaying the strain the deployment had placed on the roughly 5,000 sailors serving on the Abraham Lincoln, saying the information the Navy provided showed conditions aboard the ship were “serious and deteriorating.” Gillibrand accused Trump and Hegseth of openly disrespecting sailors’ grievances after Trump said he was not concerned about the mental health of the crew and that the deployment should have been even longer, and after Hegseth said the reality had been “misrepresented.”
“What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as ‘fake news’ turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members,” Gillibrand said.
“That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms and billionaires, but cannot take care of our armed services members, is completely unacceptable,” she added.