The USS Abraham Lincoln spent ten months at sea. It left port in peacetime and came home from a war, and port calls were ruled out because every nearby harbor was within range of Iran. Rich Kolko, a former Navy P-3 pilot and retired FBI agent, joins Keith Conrad to separate fact from viral photos. Kolko explains why the deployment's toughness was circumstantial rather than a failure of planning, and why social media is showing Americans what sailors have always gone through. He also weighs in on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's agenda, including cutting admirals and generals, creating a new autonomous warfare command, and bringing in outsiders to fix procurement. His verdict is that some ideas are overdue and others need a second look, but the drone war won't wait. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle, and so does the work.
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