Summary
USS Abraham Lincoln returned to Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego on 8 October 2026 after 321 days away, according to the US Navy. The carrier had left its home port on 21 November 2025. Between leaving San Diego and arriving at Pattaya, Thailand, on 2 September 2026, the ship spent 286 consecutive days at sea. The Navy calls that figure, along with a 208-day unbroken stretch between Guam and Oman, a record-breaking mark for modern aircraft carriers. The record covers consecutive days at sea, not the length of the deployment itself. The Navy also lists brief overnight stops for supplies in Guam in December 2025 and at Duqm, Oman, in July 2026, both of which fall within that 286-day span by date, with a third in Guam in September 2026. The Pattaya visit, from 2 to 6 September 2026, is the only port call the Navy lists for the deployment. Fed at sea Keeping a carrier running for that long depends on ships bringing supplies out to it. Abraham Lincoln carried out 72 replenishments at sea over the deployment, which works out to roughly one every four to five days across the 321 days away from port. The carrier itself is nuclear-powered. The more than 20.5 million gallons of fuel it took on was aviation fuel. Spread across the full deployment, that volume comes to roughly 64,000 gallons a day. Carrier Air Wing 9 flew more than 13,000 sorties totalling 28,500 flight hours, an average of a little over two hours per sortie. The ship also steamed more than 93,000 nautical miles, or close to 290 nautical miles a day. Its track ran across the Pacific Ocean, through the San Bernardino Strait, Surigao Strait and Strait of Malacca, and into the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and North Arabian Sea. Where the days went The carrier arrived in the US Central Command area in late January 2026 and, the Navy says, led the Navy’s involvement in Operation Epic Fury against Iran, covering 40 days of major combat operations and, after a ceasefire on 8 April 2026, enforcement of a blockade of Iranian-flagged vessels in the Northern Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman. The Duqm stop in July 2026 ended the 208-day run that began at Guam in December 2025. The ship left the Central Command area on 22 August 2026 to begin the transit home and arrived in Thailand on 2 September 2026. The group that sailed with the carrier included the destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., USS Spruance and USS Michael Murphy, and more than 70 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. The embarked staffs of Carrier Strike Group 3, Destroyer Squadron 21 and Carrier Air Wing 9 were also aboard. Abraham Lincoln is the fifth Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It was commissioned on 11 November 1989. Sources: