From Venezuela to Iran, major operations have kept US Navy supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford away from home for almost 10 months

• The US Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has been deployed for 297 days.
• The Ford left Virginia last June, and it has since had its deployment extended twice.
• The warship has seen combat operations against Venezuela and Iran, as well as shipboard problems.

The new US Navy supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford has been deployed for 297 days, a record-long carrier deployment in the modern era extended by significant military operations.

In the almost ten months since the carrier left its homeport in Virginia, it has participated in major military operations in two very different theaters while also dealing with shipboard issues.

The warship, the Navy's newest, largest, and most advanced aircraft carrier with dozens of new technologies, has demonstrated its combat capabilities while also highlighting the stress and strain of lengthy deployments.

The Ford left Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia on June 24, 2025. As of Wednesday, it was still in the Mediterranean Sea.

The ship has been away from home for a record-breaking 297 days following two extensions that could see its deployment rival those of the Vietnam era, when carriers would deploy for national tasking for periods over 300 days. During the war, USS Midway deployed for 332 days.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln set a post-Cold War record in 2020 with a 295-day deployment. Then USS Nimitz later spent roughly 341 days at sea during the COVID-19 pandemic, marking one of the longest stretches for a US carrier in decades. The carrier was, however, only deployed for national tasking for 263 days, USNI News reported.

The Ford now holds the record for the longest post-Vietnam carrier deployment.

Major US military operations

The first-in-class Ford's deployment — only its second fully operational deployment — took it across the Atlantic to Europe and then to the Caribbean in November as part of the Trump administration's pressure campaign against Venezuela.

The Ford remained in the region for several weeks and participated in operations against sanctioned oil tankers. It stayed on station through the surprise US raid to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, known as Operation Absolute Resolve.

After the raid in January, the Ford got the call in mid-February to join the growing US presence mission in the Middle East.

The warship remained there into the start of Operation Epic Fury, the name for US military action against Iran, generating sorties of aircraft to support strikes on Iranian military targets.

Issues aboard the Ford cut its time in the Middle East short, forcing the carrier to pull into port in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea for maintenance.

In March, the Navy reported that a fire in the ship's main laundry space injured two sailors, though the carrier remained fully operational. Soldiers were also treated for injuries related to smoke inhalation. Later reporting revealed that the fire was much more extensive, damaging berthing areas.

Sailor cots and mattresses were damaged, while many sailors were left unable to clean their clothes with laundry services out of commission. The Navy had to bring in new mattresses and sweatsuits to distribute to the crew, USNI News reported in mid-March in mid-March.

The Ford's crew of more than 4,000 embarked personnel have also faced plumbing problems during its long deployment, an issue previously raised by the US Government Accountability Office in a 2020 report.

The carrier's toilet and sewage systems, similar to those on a commercial aircraft but scaled up for the size of the crew, experience frequent clogging issues, prompting the Navy to rely on acid flushing the Ford's sewage system "on a regular basis," the GAO report said.

Citing Navy documents, NPR reported in January that regular breakdowns in the sewage system and clogging have been occurring since the $13 billion carrier set sail on its first fully operational deployment in 2023.

A long time away from home

A Navy official told The Wall Street Journal in late February that the ship had been averaging a maintenance call a day due to problems with the sewage system, though they also said that the situation was improving.

"The sailors of USS Gerald R. Ford said goodbye to their families in Norfolk last June thinking they would be back before the holidays," Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower, said in a statement Wednesday. "But after being ordered from the Mediterranean to the coast of Venezuela and then to the Middle East, Ford today broke the record for the longest modern carrier deployment."

"While I'm grateful for how our sailors have conducted themselves during the last 10 months, this lengthy deployment has taken a serious toll on their mental health and well-being, especially after the recent fire that temporarily left 600 sailors without sleeping berths," he said.

Navy leadership has acknowledged that extended deployments present a number of challenges for crew members, who often grapple with greater stress as deployments extend beyond the usual six-month period.

"Long deployments are challenging," Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta, commander of the Ford Carrier Strike Group, said in February statement. "Fatigue accumulates and time away from home weighs on Sailors."

The Ford's commanding officer, Capt. David Skarosi, wrote a letter to the families of the warship's crew recognizing the impact of the extensions and that plans had been upended by the move, but, as The Journal reported, he also wrote that "when our country calls, we answer."

"Extended deployments demand endurance," Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, said in a separate public statement. "They ask Sailors to miss births, anniversaries, and everyday moments at home. They ask families to shoulder additional responsibility. That sacrifice is real, and we do not take it lightly."

Lengthy deployments also strain warships and their systems, often forcing crews to rely on at-sea fixes that keep operations going but don't fully resolve underlying problems. High-tempo operations take their toll, wearing out components and increasing the likelihood of an accident occurring.