Ford-class aircraft carrier has become known as the "Poo-pu Carrier," with both the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service (NPR) and the Wall Street Journal confirming that a "toilet war" has broken out on the most expensive ship in U.S. Navy history — there are too few toilets on the Ford-class aircraft carrier, which has been on continuous duty for 8 months, causing 4,600 sailors to queue up for 45 minutes every day to use the toilet.
Not only is the number of toilets insufficient, but the quality of the engineering also has problems.
Engineers installed a fragile vacuum system, which caused a single valve failure in one toilet, resulting in all the toilets in the entire department being unable to function properly, thus increasing the queuing time.
Importantly, it is impossible to fix this system without returning the ship to the U.S. dockyard.
Using the toilet is just a trivial daily matter, but for a super aircraft carrier that needs to be deployed at sea for a long time, if the most basic physiological needs cannot be guaranteed, it exposes systemic issues that can affect combat effectiveness.
This $13 billion ship, with a full load displacement of 100,000 tons, can carry 75 aircraft, and is said to be able to strike several times more targets in a day than older carriers, but now it is plagued by toilet issues.
According to internal emails obtained by NPR, within less than four days, the ship received 205 reports of toilet malfunctions, and the ship's technical maintenance personnel had to work intensively for 19 hours a day to barely maintain some toilets in operation, but the problems continued to accumulate like snowballs.
In fact, this issue is not accidental, but rather a pitfall built into the design from the beginning.
The Ford-class toilet system uses a so-called "vacuum collection, storage, and transmission system," which essentially copied technology from commercial cruise ships. The designers originally intended to reduce water usage through vacuum suction, but they completely ignored the huge differences between the operating environments of warships and cruise ships.
Cruise ship passengers have relatively regular usage patterns and do not face the pressure of long-term intensive deployment, whereas the Ford-class is crowded with 4,600 crew members who perform combat readiness tasks daily, and their usage demand and wear level are entirely different.
This system was divided into 10 independent zones, and each zone's pipes were connected in series. If a single toilet experiences a valve failure or gets clogged with foreign objects, all the toilets in the entire zone will collectively "go on strike," which is why a single malfunction can cause an entire department to experience toilet difficulties.
Moreover, as early as 2020, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) had already clearly stated in its report that this system had "insufficient size and structural defects," warning the Navy to make urgent improvements, but no one took it seriously at the time.
It wasn't until 2023 that the Ford-class experienced 42 instances of seeking external support due to toilet issues, and in just 2025 alone, there were 32 such cases, bringing this embarrassing issue to light.
The way to solve the problem is extremely passive; calcium deposits in the pipes need to be removed by "acid washing" with high-concentration acidic solutions, and each cleaning costs up to $400,000. However, this deep cleaning cannot be performed during overseas deployments, so the ship's maintenance personnel can only use high-pressure water guns to roughly unclog them, which is only a temporary fix.
The manufacturer, Huntington Ingalls Industries, even admitted that completely redesigning this system could take as long as 10 years.
The consequences of this "toilet crisis" are far more serious than imagined.
For the crew, queuing for 45 minutes to use the toilet is just a small problem. When multiple zones fail simultaneously, the waiting time can soar to over an hour, and many people can't hold it any longer, resorting to using plastic bottles to urinate in the corners of the shower room or on the battle positions. Female sailors are especially prone to urinary tract infections due to the prolonged waiting time.
The long-term inconvenience of daily life combined with the pressure of combat readiness deployment has led many crew members to stay at sea for over 8 months straight. Some missed the passing of their great-grandfather, others couldn't witness their children growing up, and even couldn't attend to home repairs. Now, they have to worry about something as trivial as using the toilet, and many have started thinking about retiring.
Meanwhile, maintenance personnel working 19 hours a day are not only prone to operational errors, but also worsen the manpower allocation situation on board.
Especially awkwardly, the U.S. Navy is still trying to "shift the blame" when faced with criticism, claiming that the main cause of the malfunction was crew members throwing unauthorized items such as T-shirts, mop heads, and even 4-foot-long ropes into the toilets, shifting the responsibility to junior soldiers.
But anyone can see that even if there are occasional cases of improper use, it would not lead to such frequent and widespread system failures. The core issue is still due to unreasonable design and poor quality control.
It should be noted that the Ford-class is not the first aircraft carrier of the U.S. Navy to suffer from toilet issues. The previous "Bush" class aircraft carrier had previously suffered two complete system failures due to the same vacuum system, leading to illness among over 5,000 crew members, and the repair took 10,000 man-hours. However, the Navy did not learn from this mistake, but instead used the same design on the more advanced Ford-class, even adding "gender-neutral bathrooms," further burdening an already fragile system.
This super carrier, which was highly anticipated, has problems beyond just the toilet issue.
As the core force of the U.S. Navy in the future, the Ford-class was loaded with a large number of unverified new technologies from the very beginning of its development, yet it cut corners on basic configurations like the toilet, which are essential for the survival of the crew.
Now, this ship, whose cost is equivalent to the annual military budget of many countries, is carrying out deterrence missions overseas while its crew is struggling with basic living conditions, a contrast that is truly ironic.
The sister ship "Kennedy" class, which is about to be completed, has not made major optimizations to its drainage system, meaning that for the next few decades, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier fleet may continue to face this "toilet war."
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Original: toutiao.com/article/1857966914820296/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author."