New Delhi, Aug. 14 -- WASHINGTON - The mother of a sailor aboard USS Abraham Lincoln told a Navy town hall this week that life on the ship after 260 days of continuous deployment had come to resemble "a scene out of the 'American Horror Story,' where everybody's dead, but they don't know it yet." The Pentagon's response was to send another carrier.

the Lincoln, which has been operating in waters near Iran since January and was supposed to return home in May, is finally getting a replacement. The Pacific, in the meantime, will be left without American carrier coverage for an indeterminate period.

The Lincoln's numbers tell a specific kind of story. More than 260 days at sea. Roughly 10,000 aircraft sorties flown. One and a half million p...