'If Saddam Hussein decides to get cocky, we're ready to lock and load'

Naveed Muhammad's fiancée told him on the phone recently that she was about to be thrown out of the flat they shared for failing to pay the rent, and wanted to know what he was going to do about it. That was a difficult question given that, in Mr Muhammad's words, he is "sailing around the middle of the ocean, about to go to war with Iraq".

His fiancée is Christian, but the trainee aircraft electrician is the only Muslim among 6,000 military personnel aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which is patrolling the Gulf with a formidable naval support group.

"The terrorist attacks of 9/11 go against everything that Islam is about," he says. In his view, Saddam Hussein has profaned his religion. He would support a widening of the war against terrorism to include Iraq, as long as the dictator is the target. Every day the carrier's 80 fighter, bomber, surveillance and attack aircraft wheel over Iraq, patrolling the "no-fly" zone and carrying out practice runs on targets they may soon be called on to attack. The pilots call it "delivering the ordnance", including laser-guided "smart bombs".

Lieutenant Dave "Knuckles" Kneeland, a 32-year-old Hornet pilot, is on his first carrier deployment. Since the Abraham Lincoln began its six-month tour in the Gulf he has heard that his wife is pregnant. His greatest fear is that he will not return to see their first child.

"Flying over Iraq is a challenge," says the pilot. "They have surface-to-air missile sites, and you can be targeted at any time." He believes that President Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, and that if he can help destroy them, "it will be a good thing, not only for the Middle East but for the whole world".

But on a vessel with a population the size of a small town, the possibility of war does not seem so immediate to many of the personnel. Jill Ameperosa, 24, is in charge of a team of 16, whom she calls "my kids" – she is also the mother of a three-year-old boy – and says her charges are "still in the 'it won't happen to me' mode".

Their job is one of the toughest and dirtiest on the carrier, preparing the fighter jets for handover to their pilots. Her team works the graveyard shift: when a jet comes in at 2am, it has to be ready to fly again eight hours later – serviced, cleaned, fuelled and armed. It does not seem to have occurred to her subordinates that they might have to do their work in gas masks, "because somebody's dropped some chemical agent overhead".

Chief Warrant Officer Mike Patrick has been waiting 17 years for this moment. His biggest regret is that he missed out on the first Gulf War in 1991. He is in charge of a team of "yellow shirts" who control flight deck operations, a task carried out in average temperatures of 130F, within a few feet of the terrible noise and super-heated fury of jet engines constantly at peak throttle.

Will he see action this time? "It all depends on Mr Saddam Hussein and if he listens to the UN. If he decides to get cocky, we're ready to lock and load."

Anthony Makin is producer and director of 'Warship', BBC2 tonight, 9pm