The president’s interest in the service has brought it more attention but could also be its downfall.
08/14/2026 05:00 PM EDT
Donald Trump’s demands on the Navy reached full tilt this month, threatening to weaken a service already under considerable financial and logistical strain.
Family of sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier deployment warned the crew was near breaking after a record nine months at sea. A government report said Trump’s “Golden Fleet” of new battleships would cost billions more than anticipated. And experts decried a presidential order to restore old tech that could upend ship production.
The issues are now compounding each other. This puts enormous pressure on a service that has struggled with yearslong delays, embarrassing cost overruns and a shrinking fleet — all of which could threaten the Navy’s ability to defend the country.
“We have ships pushing their limits in the Middle East and the Caribbean with no end in sight,” said a U.S. official. “The Navy is really coming under the gun now.”
The most headline-grabbing incident occurred this week when the Lincoln passed its 260th day at sea without a port visit. This breaks a record of 204 days set by another ship during the coronavirus pandemic. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao announced Friday that the Lincoln would return to port.
Crew members have reportedly tried to jump overboard, families are frustrated and lawmakers are worried about the overall health of the fleet and its sailors. This has also made it a symbol of the Trump administration’s flailing progress with the Iran war.
Trump and Hegseth “both owe these sailors and their families an apology,” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the Senate Democrats’ top defense appropriator. “If they can’t take care of the troops under their watch, they should step aside for leaders who can.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday played down those concerns, saying “some deployments are longer than others.”
Trump, when asked Friday about whether the deployment had gone on too long, responded, “no no no. Not nearly long enough.”
Some in the chain of command appeared more overtly concerned. Cao and a group of top Navy brass met with families of Lincoln sailors this week to hear concerns. Cao, in announcing the carrier’s return, noted a few mental health cases and limited calls home due to operational threats.
“There is no question our young men and women have been pushed to their limits — but they have never broken,” he said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The USS George Washington is sailing from the Pacific to the Middle East and is expected to replace the Lincoln, according to a person familiar with the situation, who like others was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
The Lincoln is the second battleship to break a record. The USS Gerald R. Ford endured a record 11-month deployment that ended in May after heading to the Caribbean for the seizure of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and then to the Middle East for the Iran war. It grappled with issues such as clogged toilets and an accidental fire.
Just as the Lincoln concerns reached fever pitch, Trump released an order directing new Ford-class aircraft carriers to go back to using steam propulsion systems to launch and recover aircraft, an older technology that has been replaced by electromagnetic systems.
The modifications demanded by Trump “is highly unusual and disruptive for the Navy — especially since these are changes the Navy did not request,” said Todd Harrison, an Air Force veteran and longtime defense budget analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
General Atomics, the company that makes electronic catapults, said in a statement that work on the catapults was halfway complete and that changing course now “would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks.”
The company was awarded nearly $1.2 billion in 2023 for work on the launch system and other technology with the USS Doris Miller aircraft carrier. That warship is supposed to be complete by 2034, although it’s not clear how the order will affect the timeline.
Navy officials have fought the move in the past and are likely to raise objections again during the review period.
“I’ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot, and even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) wrote in a social media post shortly after the announcement.
And the price tag for Turmp’s requests keeps expanding.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the first battleship in Trump’s “Golden Fleet” would cost more than $23 billion, which is $1 billion more than the next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
It’s also not clear where the Navy will build these battleships, if they aren’t canceled by a subsequent administration.
“Adding the final assembly of a nuclear-powered battleship to the shipyard’s workload could lengthen the delays for those programs, in addition to delaying the construction of the battleship itself,” the Congressional Budget Office said in its report.
The Navy does not plan to use its main yards for building destroyers — Bath Iron Works in Maine, or Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi — to assemble the battleship. Both yards are also suffering under massive backlogs.
Trump said in December the ships would be the “largest we’ve ever built,” but neither yard is certified to perform nuclear-related work. Trump has said he wants them to use nuclear power.
Navy leaders have told Congress that the ships would receive final assembly in nuclear-approved Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. But the yard is also well behind schedule in constructing aircraft carriers and submarines critical for future operations.
Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.