Navy officials told senators in Washington on Tuesday that reports about plumbing issues aboard the world’s largest aircraft carrier were embellished and not entirely true.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said that challenges with the USS Gerald R. Ford’s toilets were the result of misuse by sailors and the natural wear and tear of a historically long deployment.
“If that system is operated in accordance with procedure, then it does not clog,” Caudle said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing regarding the Navy’s fiscal 2027 budget request.
Military Times reported in January that the Ford, which contains approximately 650 toilets, experienced issues during its most recent deployment with its vacuum collection, holding and transfer system, which uses pressure to suck out and transport wastewater from the toilets.
A spokesperson from U.S. Fleet Forces Command confirmed the problem to Military Times at the time but said the plumbing failures had no bearing on the operational readiness of the ship and that most incidents were isolated events that didn’t affect the entire sewage system.
Repairs took between 30 minutes and two hours, the spokesperson said, and problems with the plumbing decreased as the nearly 11-month deployment continued.
In January, NPR published a report that said the Ford had called for assistance with the lackluster toilets 42 times since 2023, with 32 calls coming in 2025 alone.
Caudle told senators that when a toilet did clog after a sailor flushed a t-shirt or a rag down the toilet, it only took a few hours for the toilet to be up and running again.
Navy officials did not clarify whether the disposal of fabric in the toilets was intentional or accidental, or what the circumstances around such instances were.
Fatigue from overuse was to be expected as well, the CNO said.
“Five thousand sailors a day flush the commode at least four times a day at least over a ten-month deployment,” Caudle said. “That’s six million flushes.”
It was less than a 1% problem, according to the CNO.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao called reports of toilet issues “fake news,” while the CNO said the plumbing system on Ford-class ships was a good design and that reports of clogged toilets were “highly exaggerated.”
A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that the ship’s sewage pipes were too small to accommodate the flushes of the more than 4,000 crew members aboard.
Clogs have forced the Navy to spend $400,000 per flush on an acidic chemical that flushes out the pipes when necessary.
The USS Gerald R. Ford returned from a 326-day deployment Saturday, during which it recorded the longest post-Vietnam deployment. Upon their arrival, the Ford Carrier Strike Group received the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest unit-level military decoration for extraordinary acts of heroism during its support of Operation Epic Fury, among other achievements.
In addition to supporting combat operations for Operation Epic Fury, the vessel supported Operation Absolute Resolve, sailed over 57,713 nautical miles and endured a non-combat-related fire that sidelined the ship for over a week.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.
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