For the carrier Gerald Ford and its crew, all too literally.

One of the most formidable weapons in the Navy is its largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Reports are that it’s already within striking distance of Iran, if need be. At a cost of about $13 billion, you’d expect it to have everything needed to wage war in the 21st century, and it does. Except that it has one problem – its toilets are broken.

The most recent reports are that for a ship that houses a crew of over 4,000, there are only 650 toilets on board. Of those, more and more of them are just not working.

According to a recent article in Navy Times, “The complications primarily involve the Ford’s vacuum collection, holding and transfer system, or VCHT, which transports and disposes wastewater by sucking fecal matter through pipes using pressure.”

Reports are that the three big issues are: Ship designers simply didn’t plan on enough commodes for the size of the crew on the ship. This means 45-minute waits on a good day. The second issue is that the way the plumbing system is designed, if one valve for one toilet breaks down in that hinky vacuum collection system, all the toilets in that department stop working. The third problem is that most of the critical repair operations to the system can only be done when the ship is at port.

As more sailors rely on fewer toilets, this is expected to stress the system and cause even more shutdowns.

Not to even mention how severely stressed the sailors must be by it.

The Ford was launched in October 2013, and so if you want, you could blame the Obama administration. That’s always fun and appropriate, even here. But when it comes to the many years it takes, and all the people and companies involved in building a single aircraft carrier, there is probably enough blame to go around.

The Navy Times revealed that a 2020 Government Accountability Office report “pointed out that the sewage pipes woven throughout the [Ford] were too narrow to properly serve the flushes of the 4,000-plus crew members onboard… To unclog the toilets, the Navy has been forced to spend $400,000 per flush of a unique acidic chemical designed to flush out and unburden the strained pipes.”

So as reports spread of problems in the bowels of our largest aircraft carrier, the mullahs in Iran may be breathing easier for now… or maybe not.

Heh. I see what you did there, ya big turd.