Near the end of the virtual town hall, a force master chief said they had been “texting the Lincoln” to get answers on some of the concerns. The text messages that came back, they said, said there was no mold but there was working air conditioning on board, as well as clean water and two protein options for meals. It is unclear whom the force master chief was texting. The leaders closed out the virtual meeting by thanking the families for their support of the service members during the deployment and encouraging them to reach out to their ombudsmen with any concerns or questions. “I couldn’t be more proud of young people, old people, all of them working together in some extremely tough circumstances, tougher than I’ve ever experienced in 39 years in uniform,” Verissimo said in closing. “This has been some prolonged work that the Lincoln Strike Group has been under, and I am personally looking forward to the day that we can declassify some of the work that they’ve been doing.”

In a combative face-to-face confrontation on Thursday night in San Diego, angry military families challenged the acting secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, over difficult conditions aboard the USS Lincoln as its combat mission against Iran stretches onward with no clear date to return home, according to two people who attended the in-person meeting. Tensions boiled over again during a separate virtual meeting later that night between Navy leadership and family members of the 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln, according to audio and video recordings of the virtual meeting reviewed by MS NOW. In both of those meetings, family members expressed concerns directly to Navy leaders about the well-being and safety of their loved ones after the aircraft carrier set a modern-day record during the ongoing Iran war for the most continuous days at sea. Among the concerns brought up in the contentious meetings: the sailors’ mental health, safety on deck, a lack of supplies, food shortages, water contamination and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months. Loved ones pleaded for information on when their sailors would return home. It remains a question that does not have any answer.

In the tense and fiery in-person town hall at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, Cao said that the Navy is preparing another carrier strike group — the USS Theodore Roosevelt — to deploy to the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln, according to two people who attended. But Cao was unable to specify when that relief would come, citing operational security. About 200 family members packed into a banquet room at the Island Club, a catering and event center on base, demanding answers from the acting secretary of the Navy. At times, spouses of sailors on the ship were in tears asking leaders what was being done to address issues of mental health and exhaustion, the two people who attended told MS NOW. One parent said her daughter feels that she is never going to come home and believes she is going to die on the ship. Others asserted that the Navy had not done enough to take care of the sailors as they fight this war. One woman questioned the mission and said she found it difficult to be proud of her sailor when she believed the military was “killing innocent civilians” and her sailor expressed guilt about what he was doing. Her comment was met with applause from the audience.

dang, if only this were, like, a volunteer military where one could simply look up its storied history of war crimes and simply choose not to enlist, y'know?

While the deployment of the Lincoln appears to have been extended for a second time, in both meetings Navy leaders emphasized the professionalism and grit of the sailors on board. Vice Adm. Joseph Cahill and Vice Adm. Douglas Verissimo, the top commanders for Naval surface forces and Naval air forces for the Pacific Fleet, along with the senior enlisted leaders addressed the 200-plus attendees virtually Thursday night. “I cannot even tell you how proud we are of them. They have executed with a level of precision and professionalism that just goes to the quality of our people that have chosen to put the cloth of our nation on our shoulder and answer this call,” Cahill told attendees, noting that the families are an important touchpoint for leadership to understand the challenges the sailors are facing. As of Friday, the aircraft carrier had been on deployment for 259 days, after leaving its home port of San Diego on Nov. 21. The ship has only stopped twice, once in Guam in December and then July 7, when it briefly pulled into Oman — keeping the crew at sea for 208 continuous days. After this deployment, the Lincoln and its sailors will be assigned to a different home port in Bremerton, Washington, from San Diego, which has left many of the families stuck in limbo as they wait to figure out when they should make the move north from California. For now, Navy leaders say that there is a 58-day window for the families to move after the Lincoln comes back and that they are looking at Dec. 31 as a potential target for them to have a “time frame” of when that could happen.

The families expressed frustration that their loved ones were missing many once-in-a-lifetime events, including births of new children and funeral services for close relatives. One spouse said they have a baby at home who was born during the Lincoln’s deployment. “My husband has gotten no time with her,” the spouse said. The spouse acknowledged other attendees were feeling the same way, as many expressed their frustrations via the town hall’s virtual chat room, according to audio and video of the virtual meeting reviewed by MS NOW. “We have friends that are on this boat as well that — they have yet to meet their children,” the spouse continued. “And I just think, like, a lot of us are kind of confused and just feeling frustrated that right now we’re in limbo of not having a date to come home.” “I wish we could give that to you,” Verissimo responded. “We are working to finalize that, and I can’t … I look forward to the day when we can have at least a date window for home port, and that means they’re heading in the right direction. But we don’t have that right now.” Verissimo acknowledged that long deployments seem to be becoming “more frequent” in the Navy, reflecting back to deployments during Covid-19, but he said he recognized that the circumstances are different, as the military is engaged in active fighting. “We hear you loud and clear the impact this has on families, on service members, and the long-term ability of us to stand, sustain our forces’ health,” Cahill said.

But many family members are concerned about potential exhaustion, low morale and the mental health of the sailors and Marines as the war with Iran nears its 23rd week with no clear end in sight. Many in the virtual town hall questioned what mental health resources are currently available on the carrier and what will be made available upon its return, according to audio and video of the meeting reviewed by MS NOW. Cahill detailed an approach that includes having deployment-resilience counselors and chaplains on the warships, paired with “Human Factors Councils,” which Navy policy says are “designed to review the human factors that impact the wellness of individuals within the command and identify primary prevention efforts to reduce relevant risk(s).” “It’s about the unit understanding and sitting down with sailors individually on their Human Factors Councils and having a conversation about where they’re at in their moment in time,” Cahill said. As for when the Lincoln will return home, Cahill said the leadership team is addressing a number of requirements to “understand each individual sailor” that will be communicated back through a team of fleet and family support centers.

On top of the timeline and mental health concerns, family members expressed worry about the living conditions and food supply on board the carrier, conditions recently reported by MS NOW. The leaders acknowledged that there had been a “stubborn clog” that caused many of the toilets in a certain zone on the ship not to work for an extended period of time, but maintained that sailors on the ship had been trained to address these plumbing issues and that most of the non-operational toilets were repaired quickly. They also said that what many sailors think is mold in the showers might actually be mildew “that is not appealing to any of us” as a result of difficult ventilation systems on a ship, but that they take these health concerns seriously and use industrial hygienists to test the bathrooms to make sure fans are working and air is flowing. They also discussed the unique supply chain challenges that caused a domino effect for timely deliveries of mail, inventory for the ships’ stores and food to the aircraft carrier and the supporting ships that are part of the larger carrier strike group. The active war with Iran in the Persian Gulf made it hard for supplies to get to the ship from the Navy 5th Fleet’s base in Bahrain, Verissimo said during the virtual town hall meeting. “When Bahrain was no longer a port for logistics, food and mail … all of the gear that was there when the shooting started got stuck there,” Verissimo said, according to audio and video of the meeting reviewed by MS NOW. “So, that was an initial very large backlog. That also caused us to, under very contested logistics, very difficult and long supply lines, we had to prioritize food, which was also a challenge and remains on occasion to be a challenge,” Verissimo said. Verissimo said the Navy prioritized food, then items for the ship’s store like toothpaste and shampoo, and then mail when it can figure out the logistics of getting shipments out to sea. The officials said getting fresh fruit and vegetables to the ship will continue to be a problem because the food spoils by the time it gets there. “We’re doing a better job with supplies and mail. It’s getting better, it’s still not good, and it was extremely bad for a little while,” Verissimo said. “But we are, we are as a nation doing the best we can.”

This is precisely the problem faced by Ukraine’s relatively slow, large drones and cruise missiles. Keeping in mind the 9,800 interceptions in July, Ukrainian media triumphantly displays about 5-10 successful hits daily, implying an interception rate of 97-98%. Similarly, the Ukrainian military blogger Bohdan Myroshnykov today gave an average long-range drone success rate of 1.5-2%. A few hours ago Ukrainian military telegrams sadly posted, for instance, this video of an intercepted unmanned sea vehicle near the Russian city of Novorossirsk. On July 31, Ukrainian sources glumly shared photos of a missile intercepted over the Rostov region. Pro-Ukrainian military analysts reported that over the course of May and June, six of the 39 Flamingo cruise missiles launched actually hit their target. This is just based on open source data, and I suspect that Fire Point is less keen to share videos of Flamingos it unsuccessfully launches than it is of successful hits. The Flamingo has a maximum speed of 900 kilometers per hour, about 10 times slower than Russian ballistic missiles. Just a few hours ago, all 5 of the latest Flamingo flight towards Russia were shot down, despite flying at very low altitudes along rivers to avoid detection. Perhaps all the rumours about the massive state privileges and graft characterizing Fire Point were true. The Flamingo is a large and relatively slow target.

I recently reported on the claims in the Ukrainian media that defense minister Mikhailo Fedorov was dismissed in July precisely because he wanted to reduce the share of Fire Point drones in long-range strikes from 80% to 25%. Not that this stopped European companies from investing billions into the enterprise, with le Figaro reporting in early July that Flamingo missiles feature French automatic guiding systems. But while automatic guiding is useful to overcoming electronic warfare, it is irrelevant if the drone is so slow and large that it can be easily shot down with other means. Anyway, strana.ua recently calculated that Ukraine’s air campaign against Russia costs around a billion dollars a month. The main drones that Ukraine uses are the Liutyi ($200,000 per unit), the Beaver ($100,000), and the FP-1 ($60,000). These costs are estimates, all around the cost of Russia’s Geran drones (though generally much less advanced than the new Geran models when it comes to evasion and speed). Assuming an average cost of $100,000 to $120,000 (depending on how many Flamingos are used), the 9,800 drones shot down in July would have cost Ukraine $980 million to $1.18 billion USD. Annually, that’s $12 billion, more than 12% of the entire defense budget. It’s also necessary to factor in spending on intelligence, operational planning, and other infrastructure on the ground needed for these operations.

This also probably accounts for why Ukraine has been rather illogically changing the target of its operations. If the goal is to destroy the economy of the opponent, one would not take switch from target to target. Instead, Ukraine spent March and April focusing on Russian oil and gas port infrastructure, then shifted to oil refineries for a few months, and now, since July 18, has been targeting the warehouses of online marketplaces. There have been some more strikes on oil refineries in the past few weeks, but this changing focus allows Russia to repair damaged facilities. Following the spring strikes, Russia’s Baltic ports fully restored shipping operations. During the pause on oil refineries, most of the damaged plants were either fully or partially restored. According to the Financial Times, only 7 of the 26 refineries that suspended production remained completely idle as of July 27. Eight had returned to full capacity and another eleven had partially resumed operations. As a result, Russia’s fuel shortages have been easing, with restrictions removed or relaxed in much of the country, apart from Crimea and other territories close to the frontlines. Even Kuban, a region close to Crimea, has lifted fuel restrictions for vehicles. Contrary to Ukrainian hopes, there have been no mass anti-government uprisings due to the shortages, even at their peak. The conclusion is that Ukraine keeps on changing targets because it lacks sufficient drones to overcome the Russian air defenses that are developed once one set of targets is struck. This also indicates Ukraine will also eventually run out of unprotected targets. All this was hinted at recently by former commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, who wrote that Ukraine’s long-range strikes, despite all the hype, ‘are expensive, technologically complex, and ultimately provoke countermeasures’.

https://xcancel.com/EventsUkraine/status/2085810040741777530

A calculation today of the terribly low drone success rate from the Ukrainian military telegram DroneBomber:

We parsed the main Russian monitoring channels tracking drone shoot-downs in Moscow and the Moscow region. We logged around 1,500 reported interceptions. To put the scale into perspective: In July alone, according to Moscow Mayor Sobyanin, 6,225 drones flew toward the Moscow region. Of those, 780 were shot down on the near approaches to Moscow. Now for the results of our sample. To put it mildly, they’re disappointing:

• 🔴~1,400 drones (≈93%) were shot down at the 1st and 2nd air defense lines in the region.
• 🔴~100 drones (≈6%) were shot down within the 3rd defense line (the MKAD ring).
• 🔴Within Moscow itself — a grand total of 1 (0.07%). One. A single drone.

And what about actual targets hit over the past two months? Here’s almost the entire list:

• 🟢The Dubna Space Communications Center
• 🟢Wildberries warehouses and logistics hubs
• 🟢Oil storage depots
• 🟢The Kapotnya oil refinery (several times in June)
• 🟢A couple of industrial zones and residential buildings hit by debris

That’s it. Against the backdrop of thousands of launches, this isn’t even a drop in the bucket. It’s almost laughable. If the tactic was to “draw out all the air defense missiles in this area,” it has failed. They appear to be in good shape, they have sufficient stocks, and the air defense ring is functioning effectively. If the goal was to identify routes for a breakthrough, the maps show they tried from every direction. There are no open corridors.

Draw your own conclusions about whether that’s acceptable or not.

https://xcancel.com/halvardous/status/2085490879582621763

Oil refinery strikes are extremely dramatic visually and get people very excited but often mask the fact that these facilities are highly modular and just because one section was damaged/destroyed it doesn’t mean the entire plant has been put out of action. They all have extremely effective means of restricting fires to the areas of damage and not allowing them spread, so Im not surprised in the least at the reports of them most being back online.

Militaries care a lot about "readiness." They like to say yes we are prepared for this potential war, we've hit our targets for munition stockpiles, aircraft, personnel training, and so on. If you tell them to obliterate their readiness by expending 30% of their long range standoff munitions, 70% of their missile interceptors, and 40% of their MALE drone fleet, they'll want it to be on something important. They won't want to compromise their readiness for a decade with a pointless and unwinnable war of choice for the interests of a foreign power. Similarly, they won't want to be embarrassed by a catastrophic military failure that will shake the public's confidence in them. Like anyone else they want to be perceived as people who are good at their jobs. The result is that they call up reporters and tell them that we're running out of key munitions, and it's not their fault. They want to make it clear that they've fulfilled their obligation to follow orders despite believing this is a fruitless exercise that will directly harm the US military as an institution. This has been going on since before this war even started, and it'll only get more obvious from here.

There are genuinely smart and motivated people in the US military who sit around just like people do on here thinking through various contingencies and coming to the same conclusions. They understand what's going on here. As an institution the military may be inefficient, sclerotic, hollowed out, or whatever, but plenty of people within it knew exactly how this war would go and what a stupid idea it was. I wish I could remember his name but I think about that tunnelcel who may have been in the USMC. He wrote a paper years ago saying they needed to start putting everything underground immediately. He's on here too. I'm not even sure if this is the same guy/article because there are like half a dozen pieces written in the past few years with the same thesis by active duty officers: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/10/the-way-ahead-is-down-the-case-for-underground-defense/

https://xcancel.com/BrianKerg/status/2012301459229130792

Soldiers received “sub-optimal” meal service while taking part in a major exercise last month at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, an Army colonel acknowledged in a recent letter to a member of Congress. The July 27 letter from Col. Nicholas Sinclair, which has been shared on social media, came in response to an inquiry from Rep. Jeff Crank of Colorado, who had been contacted by an Army specialist about the meal issues at the National Training Center. A spokesperson at Fort Carson, Colorado, where the 4th Infantry Division is based, confirmed to Task & Purpose that the letter was authentic. Sinclair wrote that the concerns the specialist had raised about the quality of the food available to soldiers were “valid,” explaining that all meals provided to soldiers in the field during the exercise were provided by a local vendor. “However, due to high employee turnover and staffing shortages, the meal service was sub-optimal for 4th Infantry Division soldiers,” Sinclair wrote. At the time the letter was written, Sinclair was commander of the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. The unit has since become a Stryker brigade. Army officials talked to the vendor, which received a “Corrective Action Request” on June 30 and then took steps to correct the issues, Sinclair wrote. The specialist who contacted Crank said they knew that Army leaders are required to answer an inquiry from a member of Congress, which would force them to look into the food situation. The soldier also told Task & Purpose that since he exited the simulated combat zones at the center known as “the box” at the end of July, the food is “a good 65% better”

(more photos in the article)

Nearly 10,000 troops took part in the recent exercise at the National Training Center. Photos posted to social media and shared to both the unofficial Army subreddit and the Hots & Cots app show small portions, bad toppings, such as expired salsa, and appear to show shortages of food. The food was provided to the soldiers before they went “in the box,” where troops lived as if in the field. The actual exercise ran 10 days, from July 20 to 29, but soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division arrived in advance, with some arriving in late June. The food at the chow hall was available for breakfast and dinner, with participating troops having to go to private vendors or eat Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, for lunch or meals. But soldiers reported long lines for the chow hall and poor food offerings.

“Some of it was inedible,” a junior officer with 4th Infantry Division told Task & Purpose. “Some sausages that you couldn’t tell were that bad on purpose or not. Protein ran out more than once. Some of the empty trays are because dudes didn’t take everything that was available, but those optional items at the end of the chow line looked pretty bad more than once.” Rob Evans, an Army veteran and founder of the Yelp-like Hots & Cots app, said that he heard from soldiers, both officers and enlisted, in mid-July who reached out about “subpar, not great” food options. Soldiers who spoke to Task & Purpose said that complaints were widespread and that they raised these concerns to leadership. However, the junior officer said that there was no official response beyond substituting MREs for food at the chowhall. “It wasn’t a ‘you’re new to the Army this is the standard,’” kind of issue, the officer said. Evans said he wasn’t sure if the training center was prepared to have a full division come through — which is between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers, compared to a brigade, which can have between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers. “NTC is not going to be your great [dining facility] meal; you’re not having campus-style dining, but you expect more than what these service members got,” Evans told Task & Purpose. The junior officer was more blunt: “I get NTC is supposed to suck, but it went from suck to insulting.”