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Naval Base Kitsap will likely become home to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier (CVN 72), the ship that's made national news in recent weeks for an extended deployment in the Middle East and is now sailing for San Diego. And a new, large dry dock facility will be under construction at the Bremerton shipyard while many work for the Nimitz-class carrier is scheduled there.

In the fourth annual Kitsap Industrial Readiness Summit on Aug. 20, Navy leaders emphasized the importance of modernizing the aging Puget Sound Naval Shipyard facilities and equipments and said that building a new multimission dry dock that can accommodate the Ford-class carrier on time is essential for national security.

"Schedule is king," Cmdr. John Daly, Resident Officer in Charge of Construction-Puget for NAVFAC Northwest, said several times at the conference. Daly was one of the keynote speakers who presented the ongoing shipyard modernization construction at PSNS & IMF to the attendees. Conference participants include contractors and other stakeholders in Washington and also from other states, who look forward to being involved in the Navy's once-in-a-century investment in Bremerton. The conference was launched by the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance (KEDA) at the Kitsap Conference Center in Bremerton.

The Navy plans to build a new dry dock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard that can handle the maintenance and repair work of its newest Ford-class aircraft carrier. This work, known as a major part of the Navy's Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) at PSNS & IMF, is scheduled to take 12 years to complete and could involve billions of investment opportunities in Washington. The Navy has already started demolition work to make space for the preparation of the new dry dock construction.

But planned work to take care of the existing Nimitz-class carriers at PSNS & IMF won't stop because of that.

"We are literally renovating our house while we live in it. That's a painful process. Restroom, kitchen, and all. We're doing it all, right? So the mission of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is not going to slow down. It's not going to stop," Daly said.

"As you see, the Abraham Lincoln, when she comes home from deployment, there's a lot of scheduled avails that are coming up, and those are going to be high-interest, high-pressure avails," Daly said. "So the mission doesn't stop. The investment continues to go. So it's going to take everything that we have to make this all work."

The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is the only naval shipyard on the West Coast that has a dry dock, Dry Dock 6, that can handle the repair and maintenance of the United States' Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

The Navy declined to comment on what maintenance or repairs the Abraham Lincoln will need at PSNS & IMF, citing operations security.

"While we do not comment on future operations or movements due to operations security, carrier strike groups follow an optimized fleet response plan that provides full realignment of maintenance, training, and deployment cycles to fit in a standard 36-month rotation," a Navy official said in a written statement to Kitsap Sun on Aug. 21.

The Lincoln has been deployed for nine months. The carrier departed its homeport in San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025 and has been in the Middle East since January. The ship served as a floating base for extensive aerial combat operations in the Arabian Sea as part of Operation Epic Fury.

The San Diego-based aircraft carrier was departing the Middle East and heading back home to San Diego, several media outlets reported on Aug. 20. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier has arrived in the Middle East to replace the Lincoln. The Lincoln's exit follows reporting from the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, on 

attempts aboard the ship, exhaustion among the crew of 5,000 sailors and sharply declining morale. The Pentagon, however, has said the move is part of a previously planned rotation.

The Kitsap Sun in June reported on the Navy's possible plan to move the Lincoln to Naval Base Kitsap. Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Daryl Caudle said that the carrier may change homeport to NBK during his visit to the base in the Pacific Northwest on June 3.

"Reagan is going to stay here, and I believe that Abraham Lincoln will probably, you know, change homeport to here as well," Caudle said in June. "We have to have division of our Pacific carriers between San Diego and Naval Base Kitsap. That's just part of our ability to sustain both of those carrier forces most effectively."

USA TODAY reports contributed to the story.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: USS Lincoln, now headed home from Middle East, likely coming to PSNS

Reporting by Peiyu Lin, Kitsap Sun / Kitsap Sun

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