Clogged Heads Make Headlines Aboard $13B Carrier USS Ford

The first-in-class carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has had technical problems from the moment of her delivery in 2017, when she was transferred to the Navy without fully functioning catapults, arresting gear or weapons elevators. Over the intervening years, Ford has become a respected fighting machine, but some of her quirks remain - like her sewer system, which does not always work in all sections of the ship at the same time. According to Norfolk's public radio station, sailors aboard are reporting serious problems with the heads on their marathon deployment in the Caribbean.

Ford's sewer system is a vacuum-flush design similar to those used in the airline industry, and in practice, it has had difficulty keeping up with the rigors of naval service. In March 2020, the Government Accountability Office revealed that the ship's engineering crew had to deal with "unexpected and frequent" clogging of the ship's heads and small-diameter sewage pipes.

At times, this has created unsanitary conditions aboard Ford during deployments, including routine toilet overflows reported on voyages in 2024 and 2025. A spokesperson for Sixth Fleet gave WHRV a specific explanation of the problem: the system can't handle "foreign material induction" like t-shirts and mop heads flushed down the head, which the crew allegedly does about twice a day. Each clog takes up to two hours to clear.

The real challenge, according to the Navy, is that the heads are connected in zones, and one clog tends to affect an entire zone at once. To deal with the issue, the Navy regularly flushes the entire sewage system with an acid treatment to remove buildup. This costs about $400,000 per flush, according to GAO.