MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln is home after 10 months at sea. Navy personnel are still under strain, though. Deployments due to the Iran war are still expected to be long, and mental health resources are stretched thin. Steve Walsh with WHRO in Norfolk is following all of this, and he's here now to tell us more. But I do want to let you know that our conversation may include the subject of suicide. With that being said, Steve, good morning.
STEVE WALSH, BYLINE: Morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So, Steve, I want to understand what the Navy has learned from the Abraham Lincoln's deployment. But first, what's the immediate future for that carrier and crew?
WALSH: So the roughly 5,000 sailors are back home in San Diego after getting leave, after a hero's welcome. Carriers typically deploy in a three-year cycle, so the ship will now have to go into extended maintenance. It was at sea for a long time, and there's a lot of work to do on it. Navy leaders have also contemplated moving the USS Lincoln from San Diego to Washington state, so families will have to start preparing for that move.
MARTIN: OK. So let's assume that the Navy learned something from that - the Lincoln's long deployment. Is it applying what it learned from the Lincoln to crews of other ships?
WALSH: Well, USS George H. W. Bush recently docked in Thailand, which allowed the crew to get its first shore leave since leaving Norfolk, Virginia, in March. It's a sign that the Navy doesn't want to break any more records if it can. USS Theodore Roosevelt is on its way to the Middle East. Bases in the region have been under fire, so all of the ships headed to the region are stocking up with extra supplies, especially toiletries and personal items, which have run short since the war started in February. Though there's a limit to what ships can carry, especially smaller ships.
MARTIN: Has the Navy done any research on the mental-health effects of long deployments on sailors?
WALSH: Yeah. So I talked with John Cordle. He's a former Navy captain who's studied the impact of stress and fatigue on sailors. The Navy looked at suicides after a rash of deaths among sailors assigned to USS George Washington in 2022. He says the solutions were designed for deployments that last six to seven months, not crews who are out to sea continuously for close to a year.
JOHN CORDLE: If you keep changing the equation on one end by adding combat ops and adding longer deployments and no port visit, then maybe you need to change something on the other end, which is what support are you giving them?
WALSH: He says the Navy has had a hard time hiring enough mental-health professionals. Part of the mental-health team on carriers are actually civilians, and they're not necessarily ready to remain in combat for months at a time.
MARTIN: How is the Navy addressing the reports that we all heard from family members about suicide attempts onboard the Lincoln?
WALSH: So the - NPR has reviewed a letter from Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, which he sent to lawmakers. He says there were eight reported suicide attempts within the Lincoln carrier's strike group. I talked with Matt Brown, a former naval officer who runs the counseling service Chimney Trail Health. Brown was invited to the Lincoln before the carrier arrived in San Diego. He told me he expected to meet a defeated crew.
MATT BROWN: That wasn't necessarily the case. They were absolutely dog-tired. The ship was, of course, in need of repair. But it was because they were out operating at the tip of the spear at the very top of their game for a super extended period of time.
WALSH: Brown says he tried to help sailors cope with their next chapter - when they will have to readjust to daily life now that they're finally back home. He says sailors need a better understanding of the psychological toll these missions have on them - if nothing else, so they know when it's time to ask for professional help. He says the Navy needs to give sailors more mental-health training before they endure the stress of extended deployments.
MARTIN: That's Steve Walsh with member station WHRO in Norfolk. Steve, thank you.
WALSH: Thanks, Michel.
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