The United States Navy’s newest nuclear-powered supercarrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has been repeatedly described as being the most advanced and capable warship in the world. However, CVN-78 faced numerous delays and cost overruns during construction, and one problem remains unresolved.
The Vacuum, Collection, Holding and Transfer system continues to clog, more than five years after the issue was first identified.
NPR reported this week that the service has grappled with repeated breakdowns 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. Breakdowns have been reported since the $13 billion carrier first deployed in 2023,” NPR explained.
A Problem The Navy Should Have Seen Coming
What makes the issue with CVN-78 noteworthy is that the U.S. Navy had already encountered VCHT problems with the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), the final Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was the first U.S. Navy warship equipped with the vacuum-based sewage system.
In 2011, all 423 toilets on CVN-77 were simultaneously out of service on two occasions.
According to a report from The Washington Post at the time, sailors had to resort to urinating in showers or into the industrial sinks at their work stations. Some of the male sailors also resorted to using bottles and emptying the contents over the side, while female sailors were holding it for so long that some developed health problems.
Navy officials blamed the issue on sailors flushing “inappropriate material,” 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 of the heads – the naval 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 – were out of service.
Some 10,000 hours were spent in 2011 alone trying to resolve the issues.
A March 2020 Government Accountability Office report, Navy Shipbuilding: Increasing Focus on Sustainment Early in the Acquisition Process Could Save Billions, identified 150 systemic maintenance problems with CVN-78, including the toilets, which it found were undersized for the massive warships.
“The Navy used a brand new toilet and sewage system on the CVN 77 and 78, similar to what is on a commercial aircraft, but increased in scale for a crew of over 4,000 people. To address unexpected and frequent clogging of the system, the Navy has determined that it needs to acid flush the CVN 77 and 78’s sewage system on a regular basis, which is an unplanned maintenance action for the entire service life of the ship.”
Although the acid flush does clean out the system, it costs upwards of $400,000 each time it is performed, and the U.S. Navy still has to determine how often the process is performed.
Clogged Pipes
The VCHT employs vacuum-like suction to pull 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 clog, all the toilets on the ship are rendered unusable. In one ship-wide breakdown on CVN-77, it reportedly took 35 hours with no rest to fix. The problem was exacerbated by the lack of a “backup” plan, such as portable toilets or the so-called “wag bags,” which are plastic sacks designed to hold human waste.
Complicating matters aboard USS Gerald R. Ford is that it is the first aircraft carrier to feature gender-neutral lavatories with no urinals. The U.S. Navy decided to increase flexibility in crew berthing arrangements, but since then, critics have noted several issues, 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 7 months since departing Naval Station Norfolk, and it is unclear when the last acid flush was performed.
Such a process isn’t something that can be handled except at naval shipyards and maintenance facilities. It cannot be performed at sea due to complexity and environmental concerns.
The VCHT problems have increased during the current deployment.
“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, an undated document provided to NPR by the U.S. Navy, through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The U.S. Navy is continuing to address the issue, and one solution could be to increase the maintenance teams, meaning more sailors will be on CVN-78, even as it was designed with automation to reduce the crew size.
The toilets on USS Gerald R. Ford are just one of several new systems that haven’t performed quite as expected. It took several months to address problems with the ordnance elevators, while President Donald Trump has been critical of the advanced electromagnetic catapults, which were designed to increase the sortie rate.
Trump has called for the U.S. Navy to revert to the time-tested, but less efficient, steam catapults. He’s said nothing about the toilets, however.
Yet, other experts have suggested it may have been a mistake to employ the VCHT on the warships. What was designed for a cruise ship that makes regular returns to port may not be as effective on a nuclear-powered supercarrier with unlimited range and endurance that spends weeks or longer at sea.
“Maybe this is an example where they should have kept the old system rather than going after the new technology,” Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute told NPR.
For now, the United States Navy is regularly flushing money down the drain with VCHT and, at times, little else.