They are the feces of their soldiers

The United States Navy is experiencing a contradiction that very few could anticipate: while maintains a superiority global in tonnage, scope and technology, carries a series of daily maintenance and sustainment problems that erode its image and, in the long run, its real availability. The clearest example is most advanced nuclear aircraft carrier and an enemy that cannot be mute for five years: feces.

The great paradox. As we will see, it is not just a matter of ugly photos or internal anecdotes, it is rather the sum of small breakdowns and material degradation that has ended up becoming an operational burden. And the most striking thing is that these failures appear on both veteran ships and cutting-edge platforms.

War, but against feces. The most advanced and expensive nuclear aircraft carrier on the planet, the USS Gerald R. Fordhas been encountering for more than five years an adversary that has no flag or missiles: its own sanitation system.

The V.C.H.T.a vacuum system to collect, store and transfer waste, has repeatedly jammed and caused breakdowns since the ship entered service, to the point that during its deployment in 2023 the problems They became almost daily. The irony is brutal: a colossus conceived to project power for weeks without touching port is conditioned by an internal circuit that collapses due to something as basic as evacuating human waste.

A lesson not learned. The most serious thing is that Ford’s problem is not new, but rather the second chapter of an error that had already given very clear signs. The last Nimitz, the USS George H.W. Bushwas the first large ship of the US Navy to incorporate a vacuum system of this type, and in 2011 it had all 423 toilet bowls out of service simultaneously on two occasions.

That degraded life on board to absurd levels, with sailors urinating in showers or sinks industrial, using bottles and, in the case of many women, enduring so much that they ended up with health problems. The pattern was already written, and yet it was repeated on the ship called to be the symbol of modernization naval.

Limited resistance. The VCHT is similar to systems used on cruise ships due to its efficiency in water, but on an aircraft carrier complexity becomes its worst enemy. The network moves waste by suction through hundreds of km of pipes to treatment tanks, and the design has a structural fragility: If one section loses pressure due to a blockage, all bathrooms can be unusable.

This is not a minor failure, because it causes a habitability crisis and forces staff time to be spent on continuous repairs, just the opposite of what the ship promised. In an environment where the ship is literally a floating city, sanitation is not a detail, It is critical infrastructure.

The price of “throwing”. The partial solution that has been identified is as revealing as it is depressing: acid washed periodically to clean the system, something not planned as a routine throughout the life of the vessel. Each operation can cost more than $400,000and it also cannot be done on the high seas because it requires maintenance facilities and adds technical and environmental complications, which chains the problem to shipyard windows.

The result: not only are pipes clogged, the ideal of total logistical autonomy that justifies a nuclear superaircraft carrier is also clogged. And in the midst of an era of budget pressure, this turns a key piece of naval power into a platform that requires very expensive “rituals” to function as something as basic as a bathroom.

Human factor and design. The Navy has attributed part of the problem to throw inappropriate objectsfrom clothing to utensils to hygiene products, which sounds plausible on a ship with thousands of people living in stressful conditions. But the truly revealing fact is that a GAO report pointed out that the system was undersized for a ship with more than 4,000 crew members, which shifts the blame from individual behavior to industrial design.

If an infrastructure does not tolerate realistic use of its population objective, it does not point to a failure of discipline, but to a failure applied engineering. At that point, the aircraft carrier stops being a “technological miracle” and becomes an overly optimistic experiment.

Even the bathroom is political. In the Ford, in addition, a concept was introduced that in theory increased the flexibility of accommodation: bathrooms neutral without urinals. That triggered other frictions, because each toilet occupies more space than a urinal and the majority of the crew is still male, which multiplies uses and stress on the system during peak hours.

Here, more than a cultural debate, everything points to a debate of physical efficiency within a hull where every meter counts, and where the habitability design has a direct impact on the load on the pipes. In the end, what seemed like a “modern” improvement may have added complexity and stress to an infrastructure that I was already going to the limit.

Rust on deck. If the Ford case is embarrassing, the rust on ships surface is grotesque because it is public, because it is the first thing anyone sees when a destroyer enters port. The Navy recognize that for years has “ignored” the corrosion problem because there was always another emergency.

The trigger to prioritize it: Trump got it an image of the USS Dewey with “rust dripping” and that made it a top-notch affair. The technical manager summed it up with a devastating phrase: “We know what to do, but we choose not to do it.”

Simple solutions. They were on TWZ The ironic part is that many anti-rust measures sound almost insultingly simple, like using better resistant paintsimprove drains to divert water, or incorporate materials less prone to corrode. It also seeks to reduce the workload and the margin of error of the staff, using single-component paints and more “friendly” procedures.

And it is insisted on not “covering” the rust painting overbut really clean it with appropriate products, which is exactly what you always know you have to do, but put off. In military terms, it is the same pattern as the bathroom: the cost of not intervening early skyrockets when it is already structural.

The final message. The final reading of these two problems is a warning about the real nature of military power. A nuclear aircraft carrier may have electromagnetic catapults and state-of-the-art ammunition elevators, but if their sanitation frequently clogs, life on board is degraded and the ship loses human efficiencywhich is the fuel of any sustained operation.

The same with a destroyer that, although it can carry advanced missiles, if the corrosion builds upincreases future maintenance and reduces availability.

Image | USN, US Navy, Reddir, NARA@WARSHIPCAM

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