More than 5,000 sailors and Marines with the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group returned home Oct. 8 after more than 10 months away, a deployment that took them into combat against Iran and kept the aircraft carrier at sea longer than any modern carrier has gone, according to the Navy.
The Coronado-based carrier left Naval Air Station North Island on Nov. 21, 2025.
The strike group arrived in the U.S. Central Command region in late January and led the Navy’s role in Operation Epic Fury, operating off Iran’s southern coast. Carrier Air Wing 9 flew nearly 4,000 combat sorties and dropped more than 1.5 million pounds of ordnance on thousands of targets during more than 40 days of major combat operations. Ships and aircraft under the strike group’s command defeated more than 100 Iranian drone, missile, and small-boat attacks, the Navy said.
After the April 8 ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, the strike group enforced a maritime blockade of Iranian-flagged vessels in the northern Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman. When Iran attacked commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in July, the carrier’s air wing supported strikes on Iranian coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites. The strike group then helped enforce a second blockade of Iranian shipping and ports before leaving the region Aug. 22 to begin the trip home.
The carrier made only brief overnight supply stops in Guam in December 2025 and September 2026 and in Duqm, Oman, in July 2026, plus a port call in Pattaya, Thailand, Sept. 2-6. The Navy says the ship’s 286 consecutive days at sea between leaving San Diego and reaching Thailand, and its 208 uninterrupted days at sea between Guam and Oman, are records for modern aircraft carriers.
“We asked a lot of these warfighters,” said Capt. Dan Keeler, the ship’s commanding officer.
Over the course of the deployment, the Lincoln traveled more than 93,000 nautical miles across the Pacific, through the San Bernardino, Surigao, and Malacca straits, and into the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, and North Arabian Sea. The crew supported more than 13,000 flights totaling 28,500 flight hours, conducted 72 resupply operations at sea, and took on more than 20.5 million gallons of aviation fuel.
Rear Adm. Robert Loughran, commander of Carrier Strike Group 3, said the strike group had been looking forward to sailors’ reunions with their families.
The strike group includes the Lincoln; the guided-missile destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., USS Spruance, and USS Michael Murphy; the staffs of Carrier Strike Group 3, Destroyer Squadron 21, and Carrier Air Wing 9; and more than 70 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
Commissioned Nov. 11, 1989, the Nimitz-class Lincoln has deployed in support of Operations Restore Hope, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, and Inherent Resolve, and helped with evacuations in the Philippines after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
