Hegseth Welcomes Lincoln Crew and Presents Unit Citation

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met the returning crew of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday in San Diego and presented the carrier strike group with the Presidential Unit Citation, while rejecting portrayals of the deployment as dysfunctional or marked by low morale. The Navy has acknowledged resupply delays and reported eight suicide attempts across the strike group during the deployment; no deaths by suicide were reported. The citation, the highest collective award for a U.S. military unit, recognized the Lincoln and accompanying ships for their operations. Its account credited the strike group with 3,693 combat sorties, 450 Tomahawk missile launches and the sinking of 64 Iranian warships. Hegseth told sailors that the negative characterizations he had heard did not match what he heard from the crew and its leadership. The ship returned to its San Diego home port after an unusually long deployment supporting U.S. operations in the Middle East. Accounts differ on its total length, describing it as more than 300 days, 320 days or more than 10 months.