The toilets on the US Navy’s newest supercarrier are still clogged

The US Navy’s newest nuclear-powered supercarrier, USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78), has been repeatedly described as the most advanced and capable warship in the world. However, the CVN-78 suffered numerous delays and cost overruns during construction, and one issue remains unresolved.

The vacuum, collection, storage and transfer system remains clogged more than five years after the problem was first identified.

NPR reported this this week that the service has experienced repeated failures with the VCHT, which is similar to systems used on cruise ships.

“It uses less water, but the system used by USS Ford is more complex. Disruptions have been reported since the $13 billion airline first deployed in 2023,” NPR explains.

A problem that the Navy should have seen coming

What makes the CVN-78 issue notable is that the US Navy had already experienced VCHT problems with the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), the final Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was the first US Navy warship to be equipped with a vacuum sewage system.

In 2011, all 423 toilets on CVN-77 were out of service simultaneously twice.

According to one report of The Washington Post at the time, sailors had to resort to urinating in showers or in the industrial sinks at their workplace. Some male sailors also resorted to using bottles and emptying the contents over the side, while female sailors held the bottles for so long that some developed health problems.

Navy officials blamed sailors for flushing “inappropriate materials,” including shirts, underwear, socks, feminine hygiene products, eating utensils and even mop heads.

On at least two occasions during CVN-77’s maiden voyage, all heads – the maritime term for toilets Dating back to the days of sailing ships, when the place for the crew to relieve themselves was all the way forward on either side of the bowsprit – they were out of service.

In 2011 alone, around 10,000 hours were spent solving the problems.

A March 2020 Government Accountability Office report, Naval shipbuilding: more attention to sustainability early in the acquisition process can save billionsidentified 150 systemic maintenance issues with CVN-78, including the toilets, which the study found were too small for the massive warships.

“The Navy used a brand new toilet and sewage system on CVN 77 and 78, similar to that of a commercial aircraft, but increased in scale to accommodate a crew of more than 4,000 people. To address unexpected and frequent blockages of the system, the Navy determined that it would need to regularly flush the sewers of CVN 77 and 78 with acid, which is an unscheduled maintenance action for the entire life of the ship.”

Although the acid flush cleans the system, it costs more than $400,000 each time it is performed, and the U.S. Navy has yet to determine how often the process is performed.

Clogged pipes

The VCHT uses vacuum-like suction to suck waste through nearly 250 miles of pipes to treatment tanks, where it can be cleaned and returned to the sea. The system operates in two primary sections, and if one loses vacuum pressure due to a blockage, all toilets on the ship become unusable. A ship failure on CVN-77 reportedly took 35 hours without a rest to resolve the problem. The problem was exacerbated by the lack of a “backup” plan, such as portable toilets or so-called “wag bags,” plastic bags designed to contain human waste.

Complicating matters aboard the USS Gerald R Ford is that it is the first aircraft carrier to be gender neutral toilets without urinals. The U.S. Navy decided to increase crew docking flexibility, but critics have since noted several problems, including that fewer than 18% of sailors in the U.S. Navy are women and that each toilet takes up more space than a wall-mounted urinal.

CVN-78 has been deployed for more than seven months since departing Naval Station Norfolk, and it is unclear when the last acid flush was performed.

Such a process is not something that can be performed except in naval shipyards and maintenance facilities. It cannot be carried out at sea due to its complexity and environmental concerns.

The VCHT problems have increased during the current deployment.

“Every day the entire crew is on the ship, a jam call has been made to the ship’s personnel to repair or unclog a portion of the VCHT system since June 2023, an undated document provided to NPR by the U.S. Navy, via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The US Navy continues to address the problem, and one solution could be to expand maintenance teams, meaning there will be more sailors on the CVN-78 even though it is automated by design to reduce crew size.

The toilets on USS Gerald R Ford are just one of many new systems that don’t quite perform as expected. It took several months to address the problems with the ammunition elevators, while President Donald Trump was critical of the advanced electromagnetic catapults, which were designed to increase the number of flights.

Trump has called on the US Navy to return to the tried and tested but less efficient steam catapults. However, he said nothing about the toilets.

Still, other experts have suggested that deploying the VCHT on the warships may have been a mistake. What is designed for a cruise ship that regularly returns to port may not be as effective on a nuclear-powered supercarrier with unlimited range and endurance that spends weeks or more at sea.

“Maybe this is an example where they should have kept the old system instead of chasing the new technology,” Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute told NPR.

For now, the US Navy regularly flushes money with VCHT and sometimes with little else.