One never knew the “brown-water” (riverine) navy would take to the high seas in this alpha example of engineering excellence.
Did you know they designed the Ford with no urinals? We all know why and those toilets instead of the water-less urinals so common today have extraordinary performance during turbulent sea states. They based the toilet system on that used in commercial aircraft. Have they ever been on a commercial aircraft? Those are and always have been terrible.
No urinals on a ship at sea.
In addition, in another stroke of planning and foresight, the eleven weapons elevators, which sailors use to move provisions between decks, are too small to accommodate a pallet jack or forklift. They weapons elevators are also set on a serial circuit so if one goes down they all malfunction.
The USS George HW Bush (CVN-77) has the same toilet system and the same problem. Is it unreasonable to expect the Ford, costing about 6 billion more than the Bush, including working and updated shitters?
Acid flushing is a standard routine to clean out VCHT (Vacuum Collection Holding Tank) systems on every single ship in the Navy.
You can’t make this shit up…
In the famous words of Scotty from Star Trek III: “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”
Ship workers had to use an expensive acid wash to the tune of $400,000 each time that a toilet was stuck.
The toilets were supposed to work like those on a commercial airplane but they became an embarrassing problem. And even though the remedy was so pricey, the Navy had no plans to change the toilet design that serves over 4,000 people on the floating air bases.
$400,000 To Fix a Toilet? U.S. Navy’s Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier Is a Problem
