USS Lincoln strike group awarded Presidential Unit Citation for Iran deployment

A day ahead of their return to the U.S., the crew of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and the ships in its carrier strike group were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the military’s highest unit-level valor award.

The 5,000 sailors on the Lincoln and several hundred more aboard ships in the strike group will have spent 321 days away from home, including 40 days in combat, upon the ship’s planned return to San Diego this Thursday.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who visited the carrier Wednesday and announced the award, said during remarks on the ship that the crew had opened Operation Epic Fury with 60 consecutive hours of strike missions, launched 3,963 combat sorties during the deployment and sunk 64 Iranian vessels, according to the award citation.

Task & Purpose reported this week on one F/A-18F strike fighter assigned to the Lincoln that returned home last week ahead of the carrier with nose art indicating it had sunk a submarine, labeled “Sub Buster.”

“They had a modern Navy before this conflict started, and then they had to deal with the USS Abraham Lincoln and what you’re capable of doing,” Hegseth said.

The Presidential Unit Citation is the highest valor award that a U.S. military unit can be awarded, nearly always for intense combat or otherwise extraordinarily dangerous missions. The Lincoln is the second strike group to receive the award for deployment during the war with Iran. The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford strike group received the award in May, as did the USNS Kanawha refueler in June.

Historical recipients of the award include Army units that invaded France on D-Day and Marine units that landed as part of Pacific island-hopping campaigns in World War II, the special operations units that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011, and a string of Coast Guard units for their full-throttle disaster response across the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Katrina.