US Pulls Last Carrier from Asia as Iran War Stretches Navy
The United States has withdrawn its last aircraft carrier from the western Pacific, redirecting the USS George Washington to the Middle East as President Donald Trump’s war against Iran stretches the Navy’s ability to keep its most powerful warships deployed. The move leaves the Pacific region temporarily without a US carrier presence at a time when China is expanding its military activity across the area.
The USS George Washington, which had been patrolling the Pacific since May, is now heading toward the Middle East to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has spent more than 260 days deployed and over 240 consecutive days at sea without a significant port visit, according to AP News. The Lincoln was originally scheduled to return home in May but has had its deployment repeatedly extended to support US military operations against Iran, which began on February 28.
A Strategic Contradiction
The carrier withdrawal highlights a fundamental tension in the Trump administration’s military strategy. The administration has repeatedly stated that the Pacific and the Western Hemisphere are its top strategic priorities, yet the open-ended Iran conflict is pulling American military resources in the opposite direction.
“The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AP News. Instead, the US is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East.
American allies in the Pacific are unsettled over the unpredictability of the administration, Poling said, while Beijing “is quite happy with U.S. distraction, with the frustration of U.S. allies and partners.”
The Trump administration sees China as a settled force that only needs to be deterred from dominating the US or its allies, rather than the top global adversary it was considered under the Biden administration. But analysts say the carrier absence gives Beijing an opportunity to demonstrate its growing military reach.
China Sees an Opening
No one expects China to launch an invasion of Taiwan simply because an American aircraft carrier has left the region. But the absence provides Beijing with another chance to show its strength, said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.
“They’re using this as part of the narrative to demonstrate to the Philippines, to Japan, to Indonesia and others that the U.S. is not the big dog in the western Pacific anymore,” Clark told AP News. “They would just prefer that countries in the region decide that China is the bigger power and the U.S. is not able to guarantee their security anymore.”
China has been actively testing the waters. Beijing conducted naval exercises with Indonesia this week and has recently shown signs of aggression toward Japan and the Philippines, two key US allies with territorial disputes. Chinese forces carried out military drills near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea this month, and a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted a live-fire exercise off Japan’s southernmost island of Okinotori last month.
The US has tried to reassure its partners. Adm. Frank Bradley, head of US Special Operations Command, visited Manila on Thursday and told Philippine officials that American special operations forces were prepared to expand joint exercises. He is also expected to travel to Japan.
Still, the psychological impact of the carrier absence is significant. “Aircraft carriers provide psychological assurance to U.S. allies,” Evan Sankey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, told AP News. The absence of carriers in the region “adds to the general sense that the U.S. is distracted by events in the Middle East.”
The Lincoln’s Record Deployment
The George Washington’s redeployment is a direct consequence of the strain on the Lincoln, whose crew of roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines has endured one of the longest carrier deployments in modern US naval history. Reports from Navy Times and Stars and Stripes detailed concerns about sailors’ mental health, including multiple attempts to jump overboard, supply shortages, water contamination, plumbing issues, and mail disruptions, according to The Guardian.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called the reports “completely misrepresented,” insisting that the Navy provides everything it can to every crew. “Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody,” Hegseth told reporters during a visit to Panama, as BBC News reported.
President Trump has been more blunt, saying the Lincoln’s deployment is “not nearly long enough.” He also acknowledged using the military “a little bit more than I wanted to” during the Iran conflict, which is now more than five months old.
Democratic lawmakers have pressed for accountability. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in a letter to the Pentagon that the Lincoln’s prolonged deployment “raises a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went further, calling for Hegseth’s immediate firing, as Al Jazeera reported.
A Carrier Force Under Strain
The Lincoln is not alone in its marathon deployment. The USS Gerald R. Ford returned home in mid-May after an 11-month (326-day) deployment, the longest since the Vietnam War, during which it supported operations against Iran and the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. The Ford also experienced a fire in a laundry space that forced it to return to the Mediterranean for repairs.
The Navy operates 11 aircraft carriers but typically deploys only two or three at a time. If the USS Theodore Roosevelt also heads to the Middle East, the Navy could have four carriers deployed simultaneously. But that would create another problem: maintenance.
The US has only two shipyards capable of major carrier maintenance, creating a potential bottleneck as overworked ships return from deployment. “We’ll end up with a maintenance debt that needs to be paid for the next few years,” Clark said. “We’ll probably have less carrier presence than we’ve had in the previous years because carriers will be lined up to get into the shipyard.”
The Debate Over Carrier Relevance
The strain on the carrier force has revived a broader debate inside US defense circles about whether giant aircraft carriers remain viable in an era of cheap drones, long-range missiles, and increasingly sophisticated anti-ship weapons. Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute’s East Asia Program, argues that carriers are becoming increasingly vulnerable to drones and missiles, particularly against a technologically capable adversary such as China, as AP News noted.
Top Navy officials, including Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, have indicated a desire to move away from heavy reliance on carriers, favoring smaller, newer ships and other assets instead.
What to Watch For
The USS George Washington is expected to reach the Middle East around August 22, joining the USS George HW Bush as the third US carrier in the region, according to BBC Verify tracking data. The Lincoln is expected to return home soon, though the Navy has not provided a specific timeline.
The key question is how long the Pacific will remain without a US carrier. If the Navy deploys the USS Theodore Roosevelt to the Pacific, the gap could be short-lived. But with the Iran war showing no signs of ending and the Navy facing a looming maintenance backlog, the western Pacific may remain without an American carrier for some time to come.
As Washington pours military attention into the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere, the region the administration has called a central strategic priority is temporarily without its most visible symbol of American power.