Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said that an army marches on its stomach, suggesting the importance of keeping troops well fed and otherwise well taken care of if they are to be an effective fighting force. This is why logistical planning is such an important part of any military operation, to ensure that supply lines are well established so that one does not run out of essentials. One assumes that the same sentiment can be expanded to the naval forces as well. If so, the US is failing badly, according to this report.
Concerns are rising about food shortages aboard US warships deployed in the Middle East, as service members report limited portions and declining meal quality. Dan F, whose daughter is a Marine stationed on the USS Tripoli, said he was alarmed after seeing a photo of her meal. “A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla,” he was quoted as saying to USA Today. Another image from the USS Abraham Lincoln showed “a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.”
Families say troops have started rationing food as supplies tighten. Dan’s daughter told him that fresh produce is no longer available and provisions are running low.
…Communities across the United States have mobilized to support deployed troops, but many care packages have yet to arrive. “The food is tasteless, and there’s not nearly enough, and they’re hungry all the time,” said Karen Erskine-Valentine, a West Virginia pastor assisting sailors’ families. “That kind of breaks your heart.” With no clear timeline for restoring mail delivery and deployments continuing at sea, families say uncertainty is deepening over both food supplies and the well-being of their loved ones.
Pictures published by USA Today show meals served recently to Sailors onboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), as well as Marines serving on the USS Tripoli (LHA-7), an America-class amphibious assault ship, both of which are currently deployed to… pic.twitter.com/gZY2vvn9wq
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) April 16, 2026
That ties in with another report from the Navy Times that conditions have got so bad that sailors are attempting suicide by jumping over the side, because they have been at sea for more Han eight months with no end in sight.
Annabelle Loma has spoken with her husband only a few times since he attempted to jump overboard from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during his current deployment.
…Loma, who lives in San Diego, said her husband had been repeatedly overextended before he tried to jump from the carrier.
…The deployment, which was anticipated to end in May, has been extended with no publicly announced return date.
…In a separate incident aboard Lincoln, a sailor on watch saw a shipmate preparing to go overboard, and he intervened, according to the sailor’s wife, Maria Rodriguez.
Rodriguez said her husband called out to the sailor before reaching the individual and grabbing their arms, pulling them onto the deck. Her husband told her the sailor had not yet gone over the side when he got there. Three other sailors heard the commotion and came running to help.
…Separately, Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday that sailors described an incident in which watchstanders stopped a crew member from jumping overboard. Stripes reported that the crew was informed about the incident through a shipwide announcement.
I am not a military logistics person but this is puzzling, especially the part about the food running low and being of such poor quality. These US ships are in regions of the world where there are plenty of allied countries that even host US military bases. How hard would it be to dock in one of them for even one day and resupply with fresh stocks of food? And surely they should have had plans to rotate ships in and out of the region to provide some respite? An aircraft carrier that can house 5,000 sailors is huge but even a luxury cruise liner can feel deeply confining after some time, so one can imagine the low morale of sailors who have none of the luxuries. It would not help that the sailors are probably sharing among themselves the reports of how Hegseth went on a spending spree that purchased lobster tails, king crab, steaks and even a Steinway grand piano.
All this clearly demonstrates that Hegseth did not plan for the possibility that the war with Iran would drag on for so long, once again proving that he has surrounded himself with incompetents who think that their wishes are reality.
Hegseth has, in true Trumpian fashion, branded the reports of poor food and shortages and desperation as fake news but that is a hard sell when it is specialist military papers like the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes that are among those reporting this.
Family members and sailors say the roughly 5,000 service members aboard Lincoln have endured food and water shortages, disrupted mail service and long workdays with little time off.
Lincoln has gone much of the deployment without the regular port calls that typically give carrier crews a break from life at sea. Carriers generally pull into a port every 30 to 45 days to allow for replenishment, maintenance and crew rest.
“We’ve just been turning and burning the whole time we’ve deployed,” said one sailor, noting that crew morale was high at the beginning of deployment, with expectations of port visits and other breaks.
…The sailors, along with spouses and family members, also confirmed earlier problems aboard Lincoln that included food rationing, water shortages and a stretch of more than a week when service members could not do laundry.
Perhaps Hegseth should spend less time worrying about the testosterone levels of those under his command and more time thinking about their actual physical needs and psychological well-being.
My first thought was, why didn’t this happen with WWII aircraft carriers? But then I realized these are nuclear powered. In WWII the ships had to dock for fuel, if nothing else.
I also wonder why the ships are not re-supplied (with cargo planes that can land on aircraft carriers). Surely this does not need an order from Hegseth. It ought to be SOP. Might there be some malicious compliance going on (i.e., lower ranks only doing what they are told instead of demonstrating initiative)?
Logistics problems were part of the failure of his Russia campaign. He had provided plenty of supplies, but because road conditions East of Poland were so much worse that the places he was familiar with, a lot of the supplies simply couldn’t get through to the soldiers.
this does seem absolutely bizarre. docking should not be required even without a landing zone / aircraft carrier. a helicopter could drop crates on deck. i don’t imagine support from bases in the region would be slacking on this, and wonder if our allies in the region might be the weak link. because the gov in riyadh might be happy to see iran besieged and willing to throw palestine under that truck, what about the man on the street, who would be delivering supplies? they might quietly rebel out of sympathy for palestine, not get the food where it can be deployed to the ships.
Wife and I sent care packages regularly to her nephew stationed in Stuttgart from around 2020 to 2024. Between us, his parents, and other relatives, we apparently kept him alive. According to him, he and everyone else in his station were hungry most of the time. He claims this has been SOP at many bases going back decades. The Army, at least, often counts on you to go buy food from local shops or have it shipped in.
Compare the food supply with the US military’s ever growing budget. This is Capitalism at its finest. /s
Back in WWII the US Pacific Fleet had ice cream ships, i.e. they had enough logistics capacity that they could spare some for luxuries.
@1: The only cargo plane that can land on a carrier is the Osprey, which is a tilt-rotor (an airplane/helicopter hybrid). It has limited cargo capacity (9 tonnes) and a range of 1000 miles. This means that they can’t fly supplies into Diego Garcia, and transport them onward by Osprey. The Persian Gulf bases might be in range (but capacity might be reduced by the need to refuel for the return flight), but they’re not currently a permissive operating environment. The planes could operate from Djibouti. There are also some airfields in Oman that could be used. Depending precisely on where the carriers are located, supplies could also be flown in from India or Pakistan. But these options require the cooperation of the Omani, Indian or Pakistani governments.
What I would expect them to be doing is to fly supplies into Diego Garcia, and use logistics ships to shuttle them onwards to the battle groups, with helicopters used for the last leg. There are two logistics ships known to be in theatre, so perhaps they are doing that.
There’s a very old saying I’ve heard when it comes to military operations:
-- Dilettantes study tactics;
-- Amateurs study strategy;
-- Professionals study logistics.
Considering that Trump, Hegseth, and a lot of that crowd are well into ‘couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery’ territory, this is sadly not unexpected, and unfortunately as usual it’s everybody trying to work under them that pays the price.
Makes me wonder if there’s a correlation between narcissism and inability to be good at organizing because you’re unable to really consider that other people may have different requirements.
The “all-volunteer” military (starting as of 1973) reportedly made great improvements in military food quality & delivery to keep morale/recruitment/reenlistment up -- reportedly a real success, according to both official reports and my veteran friends, at least for the first few decades.
From dennyk’s report @ # 4, things have deteriorated, even during the Biden years, which (somewhat) weakens my first guess: that Trump turned the chow contracts over to the same cronies handling the private-prisons-for-profit catering.
This ought to be the sort of scandal Democrats could make great political hay from and actually fix, even if my hypothesis gets disproved -- but I feel certain they can fumble even a wide-open opportunity like this one.
To add to #6, another stewart,
When Mano posted this I looked at the Osprey and what it can carry. That 9 tons of cargo capacity is just about enough food for 1 day of meals for the 5000+ personnel on an aircraft carrier.
Assuming that the Osprey only carried food and not other supplies.
Now, I would expect that multiple Ospreys would be expected each day, but if there are maintenance issues, bad weather, etc., there will be days where not enough deliveries are possible. This looks like another “just-in-time” supply chain design, which in 30+ years of experience in automotive parts logistics, fails 80% of the time. When you are moving widgets the only loss is your profit margin, but when you are moving food for soldiers; you lose a war.
Congress needs to stop this mess. Immediately.
@9 flex: The Osprey wouldn’t be carrying food any distance except in an emergency. The Osprey handle high importance supplies, a lot of ammunition and repair parts. Repair part duty is critical because on modern planes often the only way to repair something is take the entire unit out of the plane and ship it back to the US. Entire Osprey runs are done to move a single engine.
There is a fleet of civilian supply ships that take care of regular supply. These are the logistics ships mentioned by another stewart above. That the fleets are running out of food means these supply ships are being strained somehow. It could be problems getting stuff from the US to the supply ships, it could be bad planning on what to send, it is possible they are having trouble finding enough time to unload from the supply ships to other ships. There are a bunch of ways it could be failing.
On the one hand one could argue that there’s nothing wrong with a model that when on base soldiers can be paid money and buy their own food (assuming that the base isn’t in a food desert). On the other hand I read reports that soldiers are so poorly paid that their families are eligible for SNAP.
NY Times: Navy Carrier’s Problems Are Tied to Attacks on U.S. Base Early in War
The plan was to run supplies out of the Navy base in Bahrain. When this was damaged they had to shift to using Diego Garcia. This is much further and the Navy wasn’t ready to do front line supplies from a point so far from the mission. They have not adapted to the situation and not enough basic supplies are making to the combat groups.
Why the Navy didn’t rotate carrier groups earlier isn’t mentioned. I’m sure Trump and Hegseth don’t care how long they leave the men in the field but if the Navy recommended rotating battle groups I can’t see them refusing either.
@12: Even if Bahrain was undamaged, a plan to supply the fleet through the Straight of Hormuz during a war with Iran doesn’t seem a very good plan.
I agree with #12 and #13,
Access to Bahrain via the sea is only through the Strait of Hormuz. Surely someone should have realized that if Iran closed the Strait, they would be stuck in resupplying their ships in the Gulf?? It looks like, incredible as it may seem, the possibility of Iran shutting down the Strait was not anticipated.
another stewart@6:
I was vaguely remembering when a C-130 landed and took off from the Forrestal in 1963. (But did not remember the specifics). Checking that, it was a stunt to show that it could be done, and is not anything that could (or would) be done regularly.
I also found that the Osprey is slowly being replaced with something called the C-2A Greyhound, but it has a similar capacity as the Osprey.
Oh dear.
My dad was born in 1920 in northern New Hampshire where the weather was winter six months of the year and the soil was mostly rocks. It is now all forested and nobody tries to farm there, but at the time of his youth the area was all hardscrabble farms. My grandfather died when he was seven and my grandmother died when he was 11. He was an orphan during the Great Depression, a horrific time to be one. Even when his parents were alive my grandfather and grandmother were alcoholics so likely there never was enough to eat. He, like me, doesn’t have a normal hunger sense. When we get hungry, we feel sick. So he’d scrape up money (somehow) and consult doctors, who tried everything that doctors knew how to do, ninety years ago. None of this worked.
When he joined the Navy during WWII suddenly he was getting three square meals a day and these pains he had been having all of his life? They just went away. He just didn’t know any better.
@14: As far as I know there are no USN ships currently operating in the Persian Gulf; with Iran’s inventory of drones and missiles it is not a safe operating environment. The carriers and other vessels are in the northern Arabian Sea; far enough from Iran to be reasonably safe, but close enough to launch air strikes.
I considered the possibility of there being a smaller vessel positioned in the Gulf, perhaps for escorting tankers. Asking CoPilot I get the answer that all USN ships in theatre are positioned in the northern Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman. I’d expect the US to be using AWACS, but conceivably a destroyer might be placed forwards as a radar picket. CoPilot says that the US is using AWACS based out of Saudi Arabia.
Allison@2,
In fact the main problem was that he made the troops march on their stomachs, not only slowing them down but resulting in an epidemic of frostbite 😉 (h/t W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, authors of 1066 And All That).
I’ve read that it was, by competent military leaders not yet sacked, but Trump and Hegseth didn’t listen, believing that the Iranian leaders would cave in rather than close the strait. Just as Putin thought the Ukrainians would surrender, and even welcome Russian troops as liberators. Hubris, meet Nemesis. Let’s hope Xi has been paying attention.