USS George Washington Heads to the Middle East to Relieve Abraham Lincoln After 240 Days at Sea

The US Navy is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) to the Middle East to relieve USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), which has spent more than 240 consecutive days at sea supporting operations against Iran. The move was reported on 13 August 2026 by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed the same day by defense officials.

George Washington left Da Nang, Vietnam, in early August after a port call and is transiting the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean. Officials said it could take about a week to reach the Arabian Sea. The ship is the only American carrier homeported overseas, at Yokosuka in Japan, and sailed from that base in late May on what the Navy describes as a regularly scheduled deployment.

The Lincoln left San Diego on 21 November 2025 and arrived in the region in January, where it has remained through two extensions as the 2026 Iran conflict ground on. Relatives of the crew have described shortages of food and mail, air-conditioning failures and more than 200 days without a port call, against a normal rhythm of one every 30 to 45 days. The Navy has acknowledged that the war disrupted its traditional supply hubs in the Middle East, but says sailors have access to clean water and healthy meal options and that it has "not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship". Democratic lawmakers have demanded closer oversight of the deployment's length, and Navy leaders held a town hall for the crew's families.

Both ships are Nimitz-class carriers of roughly 100,000 tonnes, the ten-ship backbone of the US Navy's carrier force alongside the lead Gerald R. Ford-class ship, and each deploys an air wing built around the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. No other navy fields more than three fleet carriers, and that force is one of the pillars that keeps the United States at the head of the global military power ranking.

The relief comes at a cost in the Pacific. George Washington is the Navy's forward-deployed carrier precisely so that a flat deck sits within days of the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait; sending it west leaves that station empty while tensions between China and Taiwan continue to generate near-daily air and naval activity. Filling the gap would mean sailing a carrier from the US West Coast, a transit of two to three weeks.

Once George Washington reaches the Arabian Sea, the Lincoln is expected to begin the long passage back to San Diego. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains well below its pre-war baseline, and US carrier presence in the region has been continuous since the first strikes on Iran, a tempo the Navy has said it cannot sustain indefinitely with the current force.