A sailor assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln expected to reenlist before the ship’s current deployment began. Now, after more than nine months of continuous operations, training and drills, the service member is questioning whether the U.S. Navy could be a long-term career.
“I planned to reenlist before this deployment, but now I’m reconsidering,” the sailor told Military Times on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.
Aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, which was extended to support operations in the Middle East, uncertainty about the mission has taken a toll, the sailor said.
“Not knowing what’s happening wears me down,” they said. “If we’re not in active operations, we’re training and running drills. It is non-stop round the clock, and it has been for months.”
That pressure has begun to affect relationships. There’s more fighting, short tempers and “bad feelings,” even among people who were previously cordial to each other, the sailor said.
“We just need some relief,” the sailor added. “It’s not sunshine and rainbows out here.”
The sailor’s experience comes as the Navy faces a broader question about how sustained operational demands affect the people it needs to retain.
Historical research by the service has found relationships between deployment patterns, time underway and retention, while current Navy data shows enlisted retention remains above its goals and does not show a larger concern tied to operational demands.
The Navy is tracking sailors’ operational exposure and surveying sailors about their intentions to stay or leave, but it has not provided an analysis showing whether sailors facing greater operational demands are more likely to separate. The result is a tension at the center of the Navy’s personnel challenge: The service is retaining sailors at strong rates while trying to understand how much operational strain its force can sustain.
Doing more with less
Andrea Goldstein, a former director for force resiliency with the Department of the Navy, said she discovered during her time in the role that the service was “burning sailors out unnecessarily.”
“You’re consistently being asked to do more with less,” she said.
Manning levels can affect watch rotations, sleep and the time available for sailors to perform their normal duties. Deployment length, maintenance cycles and the availability of relief ships can also determine how long crews remain away from home.
“Your sleep impacts your mental health, [just like] whether or not you get good food,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein, a Navy reservist who served on active duty for seven years, said her decision not to remain on active duty was influenced by numerous experiences, rather than a singular event.
“The uncertainty and loss of control is certainly a big one,” she said.
Naval Special Warfare tracks days away from home, training days and deployed days to account for the demands placed on its personnel, Goldstein said, explaining that the broader fleet does not have a comparable tracker or defined “red line” for cumulative operational demands.
The Navy, however, said it tracks individual operational exposure through a Personnel Tempo system that logs the days a sailor is away from homeport. The service said it is working to use that data to inform detailing and improve quality of service.
Virginia Burger, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and defense policy analyst with the Project on Government Oversight, said prolonged operational demands can compound an existing retention challenge, particularly when service members are asked to sustain difficult conditions without a clear sense of purpose or an endpoint.
“You have to give them a cause, something that they can use as motivation,” said Burger, who served as a commissioned officer and worked on operational-level planning staffs.
When service members experience extended deployments, she said, the strain extends beyond the individual to families and support systems.
“Life goes on, kids keep growing,” she said. “You can only put so much on hold.”
Those retention decisions can eventually affect more than individual careers, Burger explained. If experienced sailors leave, units can be left with gaps in specialized capabilities, while the sailors who remain may have to absorb additional duties.
“If that becomes even more of an issue with people just not reenlisting, people retiring early, getting out sooner; that will leave units gapped in critical capabilities,” she said. “It will 100% cause a readiness issue.”
What the Navy’s research shows
Researchers have long scrutinized the relationship between the Navy’s operational tempo and retention.
A 2004 study by the Center for Naval Analyses examined Navy personnel and ship-employment data from fiscal years 1986 through 1999 and found that deployments lasting more than eight months were not associated with lower first-term reenlistment rates than typical six-month deployments in the post-1986 period studied.
The same analysis found different retention effects from the time sailors spent between deployments and from nondeployed time underway. Sailors with the quickest turnarounds had reenlistment rates 1.9 percentage points lower than those with turnaround ratios of 1.5-to-1 through 2.5-to-1. A 25% increase in nondeployed underway time was associated with a 0.6-percentage-point decrease in reenlistment.
The researchers said quick turnarounds could leave sailors less time to arrange personal matters and could compress training and maintenance into the period between deployments. They also found lower reenlistment rates among sailors involved in long maintenance periods in port.
A separate CNA study published in 2006 examined first-term reenlistment using post-9/11 data. It found that, after the Sept. 11 attacks, reenlistment decreased as the number of deployment spells increased. The researchers also found that sailors rotating to shore were more likely to reenlist than sailors rotating to sea, after accounting for other sea-duty factors.
The study found that marginal increases in deployment time did not necessarily reduce retention among sailors already expecting sea duty. More significant changes, including changes that increased deployment tempo, could have negative effects.
A RAND analysis of military deployment experiences examined workload, deployment uncertainty and service members’ intentions to stay. Service members in focus groups reported concerns about ambiguity in deployment start and end dates and the nature of their missions. Participants wanted greater clarity about when they would leave and return and what they would be expected to do.
The analysis also found that frequently working longer than a normal duty day was associated with higher-than-usual work and personal stress.
The retention decision
The Navy has programs designed to engage sailors considering separation.
According to a Navy spokesperson, between January 2025 and April 2026, PERS-4 created 124,650 Full Power Navy retention-engagement cases involving 120,484 eligible sailors. The Navy said the initiative retained more than 3,600 sailors, alongside thousands more retained through proactive command-level mentorship.
Full Power Navy 2.0 replaced the earlier mass case-creation model with a sailor-initiated process connecting eligible E-4 through E-6 sailors considering separation with retention agents.
Among the 120,484 sailors engaged through Full Power Navy, the Navy said 35% reenlisted, 24% separated and 4% are pending separation, while 37% remain undecided.
The Navy also conducts an annual Health of the Force survey and separate milestone and exit surveys intended to measure sailors’ experiences, interest in remaining in the Navy and factors affecting decisions to separate. The Health of the Force survey provides Navy leaders with information about personnel experiences across the fleet and tracks recurring measures over time.
The Navy said its 2026 Health of the Force survey is currently being analyzed. In the finalized 2025 results, 63% of participants planned to stay in the Navy until retirement. Another 14% planned to stay for now, 8% were unsure and 14% planned to separate at their next opportunity.
Job satisfaction increased to 56% in 2025, from 52% in 2024, according to the Navy.
About 53% of survey participants said their workload was about right, while 40% said it was too much. The Navy said the share reporting high burnout declined from 27% in 2023 to 21% in 2025, while severe or extreme stress declined from 37% to 33%.
Among sailors considering separation, the Navy said the leading factors identified through its retention surveys since January were: impact on family, cited as a strong influence by 54%; work-life balance, 53%; and career assignments, 44%.
The Navy said sailors who planned to stay most frequently cited retirement benefits, available assignments and locations, job security and salary. Those planning to separate cited civilian career opportunities, salary, work-life balance difficulties and a desire to focus on family.
The Navy said its surveys capture operational tempo broadly through work-life-balance indicators, including satisfaction with personal time compared with hours worked.
Military Times reported earlier this year that a Navy analysis of exit surveys found operational tempo was the top reason cited by mid-career sailors for leaving.
The Navy said its current data does not show a broad retention concern tied to operational demands. Enlisted retention is currently above the service’s goals across all three career zones, according to the Navy.
Zone A, covering sailors with zero to six years of service, is at 108.9% of its retention goal; Zone B, six to 10 years, is at 117.9%; and Zone C, 10 to 14 years, is at 111.3%.
The Navy said it is also modernizing its approach to recovery through the Warfighter Performance Optimization framework, which applies sleep science, nutrition and fatigue management to crew-rest cycles during extended deployments. Other efforts include Warrior Toughness, wellness pilots and embedded personnel who support resiliency, morale and management of operational stress aboard large ships.
The ‘breaking point’
For the Lincoln sailor, that decision is still undecided.
Repeated operational demands have made it harder to get quality sleep with berthings right below the flight deck, while access to Wi-Fi has frequently been limited.
“This deployment may be the breaking point, but it’s not the only reason,” the sailor said. “I have been questioning if this is the career trajectory I want to continue on because I think I can probably be a lot happier doing something else.”
“I love the Navy, I love my job. I just don’t know if I can do this again.”
Natalie Oliverio is an independent journalist and Navy veteran who covers military and veterans’ issues. Drawing on her experience as a talent executive and mentor, she writes about the policies, people and programs shaping the military community.
