At a combative town hall of 500 family members of the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, Navy leaders said Iranian attacks continue to “pepper” U.S. ships enforcing the blockade of Iran. They also informed families that their deployed loved ones would not be returning home for the holidays, according to exclusive audio of the Nov. 9 meeting at Naval Station Norfolk, provided by an attendee and reviewed by MS NOW.

This is the second time the strike group’s deployment has been extended since it left Norfolk, Virginia, on March 31 for what was supposed to be a standard six- to seven-month set of orders. Navy leaders told families to plan for a worst-case scenario of a yearlong deployment.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been there. I know what it feels like, I know how hard it is when your kids are asking ‘When’s daddy coming home? When’s mommy coming home?’” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao told families during the Monday night meeting in an auditorium at the Navy base.

Family members did not hold back with Navy leaders.

One person in the audience called the war “unsanctioned.” Another family member told Navy leaders in the room, “Trust within the force and among our families is heavily strained right now between record-breaking stretches without relief, shifting timelines and the feeling that communication downplays the reality on the ground. Families are burning out under the immense strain.”

At times, family members yelled at Navy leaders, saying they were not answering their questions and were giving them the “runaround.” One family member asked what the Navy was doing to push back on President Donald Trump so the conflict would not become another “forever war.”

The 7,000 service members who are part of the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group made their way to the Middle East in April to relieve the USS Gerald R. Ford that had been deployed to the area since the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

The Bush was unable to safely make a port call until Oct. 4, when it finally stopped in Phuket, Thailand, for a four-day break for the crew. That means the crew went 187 days without a port call.

Typically, aircraft carriers stop every four to six weeks on standard deployments to get an opportunity to address major maintenance issues, resupply in large quantities and give the crew a chance to take a break from life at sea in a combat zone. The Iran war has taken a toll on the Navy, prolonging the length of deployments and testing the crew’s resilience.

‘Why are we out there?’

Navy leaders tried to explain to families the reason the Bush will continue to be deployed in the Iran war and will not be home for the holidays.

“I know you’re wondering, ‘Why are we out there? Why are we doing this stuff?’ It’s just because we’ve been in this 47-year war with these Iranians, we just didn’t know about it,” Acting Navy Secretary Cao told the military families in Norfolk on Monday night.

Cao added that the Bush has “protected 3,000 ships so far from getting bombed.”

“It’s one of those hard decisions the president has to do. He’s a businessman, he knows that war is bad for business, but the thing is that with all our intel, if we didn’t stop the Iranians now, in a year from now, they would have so many cruise missiles and so many drones that we would never be able to penetrate their defenses, and they would be a nuclear-armed Iran,” Cao said.

Trump has repeatedly said that his decision to strike Iran in February has prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

In a letter to the United Nations in May, Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. said Iran has “consistently rejected nuclear weapons.” In March, Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium is buried under “rubble” following the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes Trump ordered in June 2025. A Congressional Research Service analysis in October concluded that the status of Iran’s nuclear program is “unclear” and pointed to past U.S. intelligence assessments that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program and had “not mastered all the necessary technologies” for building such weapons.

Speaking to families in Norfolk, Cao said the crew’s morale was good and played a video featuring prerecorded messages from Navy leaders, including the commanding officer of the Bush and the commanders of the carrier strike group and carrier air wing.

In the videos, the leaders said the ship had sailed more than 50,000 miles in seven months, distilled millions of gallons of water and served thousands of meals.

The squadrons embarked on the carrier have executed more than 8,000 sorties in “kinetic strike missions, defense of the Carrier Strike Group, defense of civilian merchant traffic, as well as blockade support in conjunction with Operation Epic Fury,” the commander of the carrier air wing said.

When the video ended, Cao allowed families in the room to ask questions.

The first question cut to the point: What “criteria” are necessary to bring the carrier strike group home, beyond “when the president says so”?

“The criteria is for them to agree to a non-nuclear Iran,” Cao said.

“That’s not going to happen,” the family member shot back. “They still have the nuclear material,” adding that escorting ships through the strait is an “unsustainable and unaffordable” mission that could go on for 10 years.

Cao did not offer a timeline. “We never signal to the enemy when we’re going to finish,” he said, adding that the Navy is currently building drones to relieve the 17 destroyers that are required to maintain the blockade against Iran.

Navy leaders said once a supplemental force of unmanned surface vessels is built, they can relieve one carrier strike group and reduce the presence of maintaining the blockade to one strike group in the future.

“We’re moving industry as fast as possible so that we can relieve the strike groups so we can have just drone ships out there and unmanned aerial vessels to do that,” Cao said.

Defending the ships from Iranian drones

Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, who was in the room, told Bush families that “the sailors that are out there are doing a hard job. It’s not a well-defined job,” adding that a blockade takes time to affect Iran.

He said Iran has “large numbers of unmanned, one-way attack vehicles and assets and they kind of learned how to pepper those ships — it’s hard to defend and that’s what those sailors are doing, what we’re asking them to do.”

He said he is not exactly sure what is going to happen in the next stage of the war.

“We have enough firepower out there that should we have to go back into major combat operations, we have the firepower to do it. There are a lot of things that could happen. We could find our way out of this, we could get to the point where we go down to one [carrier strike group], we could go back into combat. I don’t control that, we don’t control that, the enemy does get a vote.”

Ultimately, the Navy leaders said the person who gets to decide when to send the troops home is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Adm. James Kilby, vice chief of naval operations, admitted that he has seen Navy deployments get much longer in recent years and that he did not want to give families “false hope” when it comes to timelines. “I’ve watched this for a number of years. We push back, but ultimately the secretary of defense makes the decision based on the circumstances.”

Navy leaders in the room said they are currently preparing and training for the next carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is currently based in Norfolk, to get ready to relieve the Bush.

They said they know that they can only keep the Bush and its destroyers deployed for as long as the flight deck, the jets and the ship are in a safe operating condition.

“An enemy is learning and he’s getting better and so that training has to happen,” Thomas said.

‘Canned vegetables’

The war has also stretched the Navy’s supply lines.

In the town hall, Kilby said the Navy can no longer count on bases in the region it has used for decades. “We don’t have that luxury now,” he said. Instead, the ships are being supplied from Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean “about 2,200 miles away.”

By the time fresh fruit and vegetables reach the carrier from Japan and the Philippines, they are already going bad. “It doesn’t last more than a week,” Thomas said. “And then they’re into the canned vegetables.”

One spouse said her husband “saw an apple for the first time after like three months and almost cried on the phone.”

Another spouse went through the list: “The food is getting progressively worse, the toilets continue to not work regularly, the washers and dryers don’t work, my husband’s having to hand-wash his coveralls, he’s working on the flight deck, he’s sweating and covered in oil constantly, and he also has to hand-wash his stuff because the boat’s falling apart.”

Kilby did not argue. “I don’t have an answer for you,” he said, “other than we will continue to work at that problem.” Thomas added that turkeys were on the way to the ships for Thanksgiving. “I know that’s a small consolation,” he said.

Mental health on the ships

Then the meeting turned to a topic that drew more anger — and one that Navy leaders acknowledged has troubled other carriers: mental health.

When family members asked what the Navy was doing, Cao pointed to the USS Abraham Lincoln and its 11-and-a-half-month deployment.

“There was no suicides on there,” he said. “Yes, there was eight attempts, but a lot of them were not attempts, they were mitigated because of the mental health specialists we had on board.”

A woman in the audience cut in and said, “My husband has wanted to try to kill himself four times while on the Bush,” she said. “Nobody gave him help. All of his high-ups told him, ‘You do not have time, you have a job to do. Your job is not to have mental health care.’”

Cao asked for her name. She said she had already given it.

“He doesn’t even want to f—ing live anymore! And you’re going to sit up there and be like, ‘Oh, we’re doing everything we can, I understand.’ No, you don’t! No, you f—ing don’t!”

The next spouse said her husband had been placed on suicide watch and turned away when he sought medical help. She said she gave birth while he watched on FaceTime.

“I have three out of four kids in therapy now dealing with their dad being gone,” she said. “So the Navy’s not paying for that, I’m paying for that.”

Pressed by a spouse who said they work as a therapist, Cao conceded the basic point. “There’s not enough, and it’s a systemic problem throughout our country,” he said. He added that the Navy had brought on 100 more counselors and 25 more chaplains this year.

Cao said they also “learned the hard way with the Abraham Lincoln” about the importance of port visits and emphasized to the audience that they were not going to repeat that mistake, ensuring that the Navy was looking for ways to give their loved ones places to stop.

For all the anger in the room, the families left with a piece of news the sailors aboard the Bush did not yet have: The ship would not be home for the holidays.

Thomas said the decision was so new that it was not yet in the official orders book and that he had learned of it himself within the previous 48 hours.

The ship’s commanders, he said, had likely not told their sailors. “We took a little risk tonight,” he said, and asked families not to spread it.

“We will get them home as soon as possible,” Cao said as he closed the meeting.

The town hall ended after an hour and 22 minutes, with family members’ hands still in the air, waiting to be called on.

“I felt like they were talking to us, like, they were pushing their messaging before they were prioritizing our humanity,” the spouse of a sailor who has done multiple carrier deployments told MS NOW after the meeting. “They had a meeting to appease the families, but they don’t really have it in them to take action on the issues that people are actually dealing with.”

The spouse said the commanding officer of the Bush, Capt. Justin Issler, told the service members on board Tuesday, the day after the town hall meeting, that their deployment was extended and to plan for a worst-case scenario of 12 months on the ship.

On Wednesday, family members received a letter from Issler saying he heard about the frustration, anger and exhaustion that was expressed at the town hall and promised to deliver on five action items: communicating regularly and candidly, listening and following through, keeping sailor welfare at the center of their decisions, aggressively addressing quality-of-life issues and advocating clearly and accurately for the ship, sailors and families.

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