The Navy spent roughly $2.8 billion and nearly six years rebuilding the USS George Washington. This week, photos from the ship offered a glimpse of what sailors are being served.
The images show small, unappetizing portions. One tray held a dumpling and a scoop of shredded meat. Another showed a slice of bologna next to a slice of cheese on a paper plate. A third had a single dense patty and little else. One widely shared post captioned the photos “$2 billion for Israel and dog food for American soldiers.”
$2 billion for Israel and dog food for American soldiers https://t.co/rMh3acxrpx
— The Saviour (@TheSaviour) August 16, 2026
The George Washington is now heading toward the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has logged more than 240 days at sea supporting the Iran war, the longest continuous carrier deployment on record.
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Additional photos shared alongside the food images, including some allegedly showing damaged plumbing and unsanitary bathrooms on the same ship, haven’t been independently verified, and the Navy hasn’t confirmed the specific conditions depicted.
More pictures from aboard the moldy old USS George Washington, which recently underwent an incredibly expensive “complex overhaul” that took SIX YEARS to finish. Our navy is like this because we only have ONE shipyard capable of refueling and repairing a nuclear aircraft carrier. pic.twitter.com/RFpITp8HRt
— Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) August 16, 2026
This kind of documentation from sailors themselves has been accumulating since spring, and it isn’t limited to a single ship.
USA Today reported in April that families of Lincoln and USS Tripoli crew members had shared nearly identical photos, with one mother saying she believed her son had lost 20 pounds during deployment. A sailor aboard the Lincoln reportedly told his mother that the crew “eat when they can, and they divvy up food evenly when one person gets more than the others,” adding that he expected things to get worse as supplies ran lower.
California Congressman Mike Levin called it “completely unacceptable” at the time, saying “the most powerful military in the world is failing to adequately feed its own troops.”
This is completely unacceptable, and Congress must investigate.
Service members aboard the USS Tripoli and USS Abraham Lincoln are rationing food and going without fresh produce.
Their families, worried that their loved ones are going hungry, are assembling care packages… https://t.co/LxB1656mSC
— Rep. Mike Levin (@RepMikeLevin) April 17, 2026
The Navy’s answer hasn’t changed since then.
The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations maintains that “both USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli have sufficient food onboard to serve their crews with healthy options,” and has released its own photos of stocked serving lines to counter the sailors’ images.
The @USNavy possesses an unmatched logistics capability to sustain operations at sea, and routine menu adjustments are simply how we optimize our endurance to keep our warships in the fight.
— Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (@USNavyCNO) April 17, 2026
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the reports “FAKE NEWS,” saying both ships carry “over 30 days of Class I food supplies” and that “NavCent monitors this every day, for every ship. Our sailors deserve — and receive — the best.” Trump added his own comment last week, describing Lincoln’s record deployment length as “not nearly long enough” and denying that any family members had raised concerns, a response that drew its own wave of criticism, given how many families already had, on the record, weeks earlier.
The George Washington has been through this once already, with far worse consequences.
Five sailors assigned to the George Washington died by suicide within a single year during an earlier extended stretch in dry dock, three of them within one week in April 2022, following complaints at the time about unlivable conditions aboard a ship undergoing overhaul.
A Navy investigation later identified “some common quality of life challenges” tied to that period, without finding a direct link between the individual deaths. John Sandor, whose 19-year-old son Xavier died aboard the ship after repeatedly raising concerns about it, told NBC News: “It’s still fresh, and it seems like they swept it under the carpet and moved on.”
Featured image via X screengrab
