With 4,600 sailors finally home, USS Gerald R. Ford will finally receive some much needed repairs and an upgrade to its beleaguered sewage system.
The country's newest aircraft carrier undertook an eight-month maiden voyage in January 2024, swiftly followed by a nearly 11-month deployment. That is longer than any carrier had been away from since the Vietnam War. It is expected to go into maintenance at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Norfolk, Va.
Crews will repair the damage caused by a fire that started in the laundry room in March and spread to the area where sailors sleep. At the same time, workers will also upgrade the ship's sewage system, said Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, who oversees the shipyard.
NPR has reported on numerous breakdowns that plagued the ship during the early months of its recent record-breaking long deployment. Originally contacted by a parent of a sailor on board the Ford about the sewage system issues, NPR later reviewed emails from a Freedom of Information Act request that showed how the hull technicians on the ship were struggling to keep it running.
The emails between departments covered March to August 2025. The carrier left Norfolk on June 24, 2025, for a deployment that would go from Europe, to the Caribbean for the operation around Venezuela and then to Operation Epic Fury, which targeted Iran.
But the plumbing problem isn't just a question of a plunger and some elbow grease. The system, used on cruise ships, uses smaller pipes and vacuum suction to flush the toilets.
Known as the Vacuum Collection, Holding, and Transfer (VCHT) it's unique to the new Ford-class aircraft carriers.
A March 18 email to the crew from the Master Machinist's Mate, who is responsible for the ship's intricate systems, explained that the most common problem was a hose on the back of the toilet that had been coming loose, causing the system to lose suction. "I can't be more clear. WE NEED YOUR HELP TO PREVENT OUR VCHT SYSTEM FROM GOING DOWN AND CREATING UNSANITARY CONDITIONS," the email says.
Technicians in the ship's hull department, which handles maintenance, offered to hold training sessions for sailors in how to use the system. Sailors also found T-shirts and other articles of clothing as well as a four-foot piece of rope, according to an Aug. 26, 2025, memo.
The carrier received increasing media attention as its deployment wore on, especially after a March 16 fire sidelined the carrier for a time during the attacks on Iran.
The Navy has maintained that the USS Ford's systems operated within expected parameters with more than 4,000 personnel embarked. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the problems with the sewage system have been overblown when he was asked about the breakdowns during the Ford's homecoming in May.
"The sanitation systems on board any ship, submarine, destroyer, cruiser, carrier, all have challenges," Caudle said. "It's not whether or not that happens, it is when it does. How do we attack it, fix it, get it back online? And the team on Ford is very good at that."
Enlisting sailors' help
Problems with the sewage system were known to the Navy before the carrier was finished being built. USS George HW Bush used a vacuum system; it sidelined the ship in 2011, before the Navy installed a fix to help isolate the problem.
Emails reviewed by NPR also show hull technicians on the Ford were asking sailors to help find leaks among the hundreds of toilets. A loose valve in one area could potentially cause all of the toilets in that part of the ship to fail.
One Ford officer explained what was happening in an Aug. 15 email, writing, "It's a closed system and thousands of components ship-wide that fail daily. With one commode control valve failure, depending on the location," all of the toilets in that area of the ship can be brought down, or even all of the toilets through the front or rear of the aircraft carrier.
Now that the USS Ford is finally home, the shipyard will install the same fix used on the USS Bush.
"Right now it's essentially in quarters, and the new system subdivides it significantly further, so that a problem in one bathroom doesn't cut off a quarter of the ship," Hakimzadeh said.
The Government Accountability Office highlighted the problems in a 2020 report, including that the Ford requires an acid flush to keep its sewage systems clear, which costs $400,000 each time it's used. The flushes cannot be done while the ship is deployed, but it will happen now the Ford is back in Norfolk.
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