Nury Vittachi@NuryVittachi
THE PLANNED U.S. ATTACK ON IRAN has a hitch: most of the missile-targeting crew are queuing for toilets on the lead vessel, the USS Gerald R Ford.
This is not a joke. A set of emails was obtained by NPR, a US public broadcasting group, revealing that toilet wars have broken out on board the most expensive ship the US Navy ever built. The Wall St Journal followed up to confirm the tale today.
TLDR Summary: There are too few functioning toilets for 4,600 sailors and the problem is worsening daily—there’s no chance of fixing the system without returning the ship to the US dockyards.
.
BIG PROBLEMS TO DISCHARGE
Problem one: Design planners screwed up by including too few toilets for 4,600 sailors, leading to 45-minute queues on a daily basis.
Problem two: Engineers screwed up by installing a fragile vacuum system in which a single valve breakdown on one toilet can stop all the toilets in an entire department functioning—making the queues even longer.
Problem three: Some of the temporary repair operations (such as using an acid flush to clear out calcium build-ups) can only be done while the ship is docked: no prospect of that. But with so many toilets out of order, too much pressure is put on the ones still working, so the problem will just spread.
.
KEY PLAYER IN U.S. ATTACKS
And the issues have been gradually mounting for more than a year. “A March 18, 2025 email from the engineering department sent out to all chiefs on the ship said there were 205 [toilet] breakdowns in four days,” the NPR reported.
The ship is at the heart of US overseas attack operations, working for months in waters near Venezuela, to support the abduction of the country’s president and the seizing of ships carrying oil to customers, and is now heading the planned regime change operation in Iran. Israel wants a pro-Netanyahu leader installed, as the US has done in many other countries.
But how can they attack Iran while staff are queuing for the loo?
.
WAR OF WORDS ON BOARD
One result of all this is war between sailors and on-board sewage staff (called Hull Technicians, or HTs).
One sewage engineering head complained that the sailors put all sorts of problematic material down the toilets, including t-shirts: “Our sewage system is being mistreated and destroyed by Sailors on a daily basis. My HT's are currently working 19 hours a day right now trying to keep up with the demand.”
Sigh. And the US taxpayer spent US$13 billion on the ship.
On the plus side, it would be delightful if the carrier’s desperate lack of functioning toilets caused the attack on Iran was cancelled or postponed.
