Beijingwalker
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How US Navy Conditions Compare to China’s
Published
Aug 18, 2026 at 02:36 PM EDT
As the USS George Washington aircraft carrier heads to the Middle East, expected to relieve sailors and Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln, fresh scrutiny has fallen on living conditions aboard U.S. Navy ships—especially as the move will leave the U.S. without a single carrier deployed in Asia to stare down China.
U.S. lawmakers have demanded answers about conditions on the Lincoln, after family members and text messages purportedly sent by those on board detailed plumbing problems, dipped morale, unreliable water supplies and food shortages.
The carrier has spent more than 200 days at sea without a port call and was scheduled to return to its home port of San Diego in May. But it was redirected from the Pacific to the Middle East ahead of the start of the Iran war on February 28, and its deployment has been repeatedly extended.
Footage then emerged claiming to show mold growing around toilets aboard the Lincoln and pipes encrusted with dirt. The U.S. Navy told Newsweek it was looking into the images.
In a separate incident, a guided-missile destroyer lost power in late July and spent several days floating in the South China Sea before it was towed to a port in the Philippines.
Crew members aboard the USS Benfold didn't have access to toilets, air conditioning and other facilities during that time, and their supplies of drinking water were affected, said Commander Matthew Comer, a spokesperson for the U.S. 7th Fleet.
Meanwhile, the U.S. 5th Fleet, which is headquartered in Bahrain and covers vast chunks of the Middle East, was forced to deny reports on Sunday that feminine hygiene products had run low on the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship deployed in the Middle East. Amphibious assault ships are essentially small aircraft carriers for ferrying troops, helicopters and advanced fighter jets.
The Navy, while powerful and spread across much of the globe, has been stretched by the months of conflict with Tehran, which followed strike campaigns and vast build-ups in Latin America.
The fast pace of U.S. military operations around the world comes after years of delays in U.S. shipyards building new vessels, ballooning costs and a shortage of skilled workers to carry out construction and maintenance.
The reports plaguing multiple U.S. Navy ships, and the redeployment of the Washington—which was the only U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in the Pacific as part of U.S. efforts to show force and presence near China, come shortly after Beijing's navy became bigger than the total U.S. fleet, by number of ships.
What Do We Know About Conditions Aboard Chinese Ships?
There's less open-source information available about conditions aboard Chinese warships compared with U.S. Navy vessels.Chinese state media has described the inner workings of some of the country's naval vessels. The China Daily described the supermarket, post office and bars with different volume restrictions for their patrons aboard the Liaoning aircraft carrier in 2012, although the information emerged on government-controlled media.
But the same outlet reported that Chinese Premier Xi Jinping ordered the Chinese military" at all levels to improve their members' living and working conditions" as he toured the living quarters aboard the Fujian aircraft carrier in late 2025.
Within any navy, conditions vary within the fleet. Smaller ships are typically more cramped and more difficult to live and work aboard for long stints, and the newest ships will likely have better conditions than those nearing the end of their life.
Living conditions, like fresh food supplies, often hinge on logistics, rather than physical state of facilities on the ship. However, ships undergoing maintenance are often refitted at the same shipyards where new vessels are under construction.
The USS George Washington finished nearly six years of maintenance work—roughly two years longer than planned—at Newport News in 2023. It's also where the newest Ford-class aircraft carriers are being pieced together.
And while the U.S. shipbuilding industry has struggled, China's has flourished.
China has more than 300 shipyards and produces more than half of the world's commercial ships each year, according to experts with the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) think tank. Many of those shipyards are dual-use, meaning they also churn out vessels for the Chinese navy.
Beijing has a "staggering advantage" over U.S. shipbuilding, which produced only five large merchant ships in 2024, the CSIS said last year. By comparison, analysts said, one Chinese shipbuilder alone churned out 250 vessels.
U.S. officials acknowledge deep cracks in the U.S. shipbuilding industry, which the White House called "atrophied" earlier this month.
President Donald Trump announced in a national security memorandum on Thursday that the U.S. Navy will be able to utilize a small number of vessels made overseas, with U.S. shipyards unable to keep pace with current orders and planned projects falling behind. The Navy unveiled a new shipbuilding strategy in May, saying it operates only 291 battle-force ships—64 fewer than it's legally required to have up and running.
It's not just about aircraft carriers. The Navy has "persistent challenges" in keeping its non-nuclear-powered ships running, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) assessed last year.
There's a shortage of spare parts and qualified personnel to fix up cruisers, destroyers and other ship types, and a "continual need to defer maintenance," the GAO said. All U.S. aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, so they don't fall into the scope of this particular report by the GAO.
But the GAO said in 2022 that shipyards will not be able to handle nearly one-third of the maintenance scheduled for U.S. aircraft carriers and submarines over the next 20 years.
More than half of the equipment in use at shipyards is past its expected lifespan, and between 2000 to 2015, U.S. shipyards fell behind on maintenance for ships because of equipment shortages, the office added.
Mental Health Aboard
Experts and officials say long, drawn-out deployments can harm the mental health of sailors, who are often in close quarters and without access to easy communication with their families.Extending already-monthslong deployments without clear, compelling reasons can demotivate or frustrate those onboard, cramped into contained quarters, a former U.S. Navy commander previously told Newsweek. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.
Roughly every four to five months into a deployment, sailors can become "anxious" or wound up and will need to make a long port call or other distraction, they added.
"Probably the biggest driver of stress is not knowing the end date of deployment," said retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a former commander of Carrier Strike Group 5 aboard the Washington who also headed operations for the U.S. Pacific Command.
"Uncertainty is tough," he told Newsweek.
Analysts say longer U.S. carrier deployments are becoming more common because of the demands put on the limited fleet. In among Democrats' calls for answers about conditions aboard the Lincoln, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said in a letter addressed to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao last week that he had "serious concerns" about the "increasing length" of carrier deployments.
Hegseth last week said that the reports of poor conditions aboard the Lincoln "completely misrepresented." President Donald Trump, in separate comments, said the Lincoln had not been deployed "nearly long enough."
A U.S. Navy spokesperson told Newsweek last week that officials hadn't found any evidence of a mental health crisis aboard the Lincoln, but the service takes "every service member’s well-being seriously."
U.S. Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper visited the carrier on Saturday and praised military officials for "stepping up" to make the physical and mental health of the crew aboard a "priority."
But Cooper also acknowledged that long stints at sea are "uniquely challenging and tough."
While the U.S. sails around the world, China has historically stayed closer to its home soil, meaning lengthier stints without port calls are far less common for Beijing's sailors.
Yet observers say China has been learning how to move further beyond its shores, including how to set up logistics chains, in recent years.
A 2018 study of 1,200 Chinese navy personnel found that the sailors' mental and physical health was likely impacted by how long they'd spent in the military, as well as personal factors like how much money their household brought in or how often they drank alcohol.
The study explicitly nodded to the "very few" examinations of what impacts the physical and mental health of Chinese navy personnel.
Another 2016 study found that medical records for more than 1,500 Chinese navy crewmembers serving between 2011 and 2015 showed "significantly higher" cases of mental and behavioral disorders, compared with when they were not deployed. Sailors also suffered more from insomnia when deployed far from Chinese soil.
