The End of a Strategic Deployment

As the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower sailed toward Norfolk Harbor, a small cargo plane landed on the flight deck amid swirling wind and rain.

After the plane jerked to a halt, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and top Navy officials disembarked. A few minutes later, they made their way down to the hangar deck, where thousands of sailors, all eager to be home, waited.

It was an extraordinarily pumped “all hands” call. While the sailors cheered, the chief of naval operations recounted the strike group’s achievements. But there was also a sense of relief that a long job was on the cusp of completion. The Eisenhower set sail from Norfolk a week after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, and its six-month deployment had been extended three times. Now the crew was at last coming home, but only after being involved in one of the most intense naval firefights since World War II.

Speaking to the sailors gathered on the hangar deck, Mr. Sullivan recounted how he would walk into the Oval Office and tell President Biden about the exploits of the Eisenhower and its strike group, shooting down all manner of Iranian-made drones and rescuing sailors attacked by the Houthis.

“Man, what stories I got to tell: You guys played defense, you played offense,” Mr. Sullivan told the crowd on Saturday. “And when somebody comes at us, we come back harder at them.”