The 4,500 sailors of the carrier USS George HW Bush are unsure of when they will return home after seven months at sea.
“The simple answer is there are schedules out there, but we don't know because the world gets a vote for when we're going to come back,” said Rear Adm. Todd Cimicata, commander of the USS Bush carrier strike group, during a conference call from the Middle East.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated that the U.S. may restart the fighting with Iran after the midterm elections. A third aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, is making its way to the Middle East. The USS George Washington is also in the region.
So far, the USS Bush has flown more than 8,000 sorties since arriving in the North Arabian Sea.
Long supply lines remain a challenge while Iran continues to target the Navy’s main supply hub in the region. It’s forced the Navy to design long workarounds and send extra supply ships to the region and supply more goods from the air, Cinicata said.
“The delivery mechanism to get everything to the ship is extremely long ranges and very few places to stop to have access and delivery services of any good, that means from parts for all of our assets, to toothpaste to food, anything,” he said. “Even just moving people means going thousands of miles in between land and the ship, and that makes things very difficult. …The entire sustainment system has bent around the reality of the geography through which we have to transport all of our goods.”
Conditions have improved since the well-publicized problems on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. Mail and other packages still take months to arrive, but 100 pallets of mail arrived within the last week, said Capt. Justin Issler, captain of the USS Bush.
Leadership on the carrier would not address whether there have been suicides or attempted suicides within the strike group.
“What I can say is that our mental health numbers are very similar to any other deployment, and so we haven't seen any sort of spike based off of the common deployment and what we're doing out here,” Issler said.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao told Congress that the Lincoln also had an average number of suicide attempts. In a letter, Cao confirmed that there were eight attempts among the Lincoln carrier strike group during more than 10 months at sea.
Issler said that the USS Bush has a full complement of Navy and civilian mental health providers and chaplains.
“I'm not tracking any sort of wait times. I'm tracking same-day visits. Obviously, if it's critical care, it's like at that moment. And then right now we have walk-ins available,” Issler said.
The threat of Iran has made it difficult for ships to make port. USS Lincoln broke a record for time at sea for a carrier. USS Bush was allowed to leave the region in early October for a port visit in Thailand before returning to the North Arabian Sea. Issler said the port visit has helped the crew’s resilience while they wait for the Navy to decide when they will return home.
