We all live with a squeaky hinge or stubborn drawer, but when a toilet decides to, uh, give out, it makes for a long day. Everything stops, and every plan bends around one unavoidable destination.
Multiply this irritation by thousands of sailors at sea.
America’s newest aircraft carrier projects unmatched power, yet it also suffers repeated failures in something far more basic.
The ship’s toilets are repeatedly failing at their only job.
The USS Gerald R. Ford is the most advanced aircraft carrier ever built: electromagnetic catapults, advanced radar systems, and next-generation defenses define the ship’s mission.
Yet crews are forced to bring plungers to a potluck.
When those systems go down, bathrooms stop working, waste backs up, and repair crews are forced to scramble. Again and again. Daily routines become a form of damage control as sailors lose time and schedules slip.
On a ship designed to project strength, the inability to install the technology advanced by the Romans thousands of years ago is not a good look.
NPR reported that emails in documents show how the ship is working to address it.
Problems with the Vacuum Collection, Holding, and Transfer (VCHT) system increased in 2025. The vacuum system was adopted in part from the cruise ship industry. It uses less water, but the system used by USS Ford is more complex. Breakdowns have been reported since the $13 billion carrier first deployed in 2023.
“Every day that the entire crew is present on the ship, a trouble call has been made for the ship’s force personnel to repair or unclog a portion of the VCHT system, since June 2023,” reads an undated document provided by the Navy, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Those risks were flagged years before deployment in oversight reviews: pipes were too narrow, pressure balances were too sensitive, and using complex components increased the risk of clogs and system failure. A design that favored sophistication over durability.
We investigated every class of ships the Navy recently built and found 150 examples of systemic maintenance problems. Sailors showed us things like failed engines, faulty electronics, and clogged toilets.
These problems might have been avoided with attention to future maintenance needs during the ships’ design and construction.
Those warnings reached senior levels in acquisition, programs, and engineering, who reviewed the findings and …moved forward anyway, brimming with confidence that adjustments would be made down the road.
Now, at sea, later becomes now, and fixes aren’t so easy.
Responsibility doesn’t vanish into the sea air. Naval Sea Systems Command oversees design standards, Hunting Ingalls Industries built the carrier, program executives approved the system, and senior Navy leadership accepted the risk.
Sailors didn’t want complex, but they inherited it. Each failure illustrates decisions from every decision-maker, where theoretical performance is outweighed by day-to-day reliability.
The United States Navy remains the most capable maritime force ever assembled, yet hours have been spent managing plumbing emergencies that cut into training, when fatigue builds, maintenance backlogs grow, and operational focus drifts.
Exploiting a rival’s weakness isn’t necessary when inefficiency does the work for it.
Defense programs often chase shiny, super-cool toys, but forget a basic need. While next-generation earns praise, pipes and valves don’t. When the basics fail, everything above it slows.
The ship’s plumbers fix the pipes, but leaders need to change their priorities; simplicity and field testing matter, and crew feedback is more important than diagrams that have never seen a rough deployment.
Currently, redesigns are underway, pipe diameters are growing, maintenance procedures are changing, and crews are adapting. It’s a band-aid version of progress appearing in increments, not resolution.
Although Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has done yeoman’s work in restoring the military, he still has a lot of work to do: long-term improvement requires a cultural change where programs reward reliability as fiercely as innovation, and accountability needs to be tied to decisions, not spread out across the bureaucracy.
The toilet problem has improved while the ship continues its deployment; the average outage is between 30 minutes and 2 hours, and doesn’t impact operations.
Experts say a long-term fix is not expected this year.
An aircraft carrier is a moving island city, where areas of the ship impress celebrities; the ship is only livable because its toilets work properly. Until the basics are met, power projection remains neutral, waiting for a flush that finally arrives.
Big failures often start with small systems that no one wanted to question. PJ Media VIP focuses on competence, accountability, and the costs of getting basics wrong.
