{"id":176773,"date":"2020-03-24T20:33:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T01:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/03\/24\/remember-the-400-toilet-seat\/"},"modified":"2020-03-24T20:33:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T01:33:00","slug":"remember-the-400-toilet-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/03\/24\/remember-the-400-toilet-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember the $400 Toilet Seat?"},"content":{"rendered":"
How about the $400,000 toilet drain cleaning<\/a>?<\/div>\n

Yes, it appears that our newest aircraft carriers, the Gerald Ford class, has another problem in addition to its advanced catapult system, advanced arresting gear, and advanced weapons elevators, it’s toilets do not work properly.<\/p>\n

Pretty much every time that they attempted to make a technological great leap forward, it simply has not been able to work reliably:<\/p>\n

New toilets on the Navy\u2019s two newest aircraft carriers clog so frequently that the ships\u2019 sewage systems must be cleaned periodically with specialized acids costing about $400,000 a flush, according to a new congressional audit outlining $130 billion in underestimated long-term maintenance costs.<\/p>\n

The Navy isn\u2019t sure the toilet systems on the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS George H. W. Bush can withstand the demand without failing frequently, according to the watchdog agency\u2019s report on service sustainment costs released Tuesday. <\/p>\n

The new toilet, similar to what\u2019s used on commercial aircraft, is experiencing \u201cunexpected and frequent clogging of the system\u201d so the \u201cunplanned maintenance action\u201d will be needed \u201cfor the entire service life of the ship,\u201d the GAO said in the report requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee. <\/p>\n

Although the costly toilets are illustrative of the problem, \u201cwe generally did not include these types of ongoing costs in our calculation\u201d of the Navy\u2019s looming sustainment bill, according to the report.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Overall, the Ford\u2019s estimated lifetime operations and sustainment costs have grown to $123 billion from $77.3 billion, the most of six programs GAO evaluated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Carrier toilet system is indicative of the kinds of issues we highlight in our report that are requiring more money, time, and effort to fix than originally anticipated due to a lack of adequate sustainment planning during the acquisition process,\u201d said Shelby Oakley, a GAO director who manages the agency\u2019s ship acquisition reviews <\/p>\n

\u201cThe pipes are too narrow and when there are a bunch of sailors flushing the toilet at the same time, like in the morning, the suction doesn\u2019t work,\u201d said Oakley. \u201cThe Navy didn\u2019t anticipate this problem.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The US Navy has almost 250 years experience with handling how much sh%$ a sailor puts out, and they could not get this right.<\/p>\n

Hell, even Princess Cruise line can make their toilets work. <\/p>\n

This problem is not unique to the Navy though, when the B-2 originally deployed, there was no toilet (now they have a chamber pot), and they added a cot to the back of the cockpit so that pilots could deal with the rigors of missions that could exceed 24 hours.<\/p>\n

How does the Pentagon, and the defense contractors, miss this crap?  (Pun intended)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How about the $400,000 toilet drain cleaning? Yes, it appears that our newest aircraft carriers, the Gerald Ford class, has another problem in addition to its advanced catapult system, advanced arresting gear, and advanced weapons elevators, it’s toilets do not work properly. Pretty much every time that they attempted to make a technological great leap …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[381,588,379,445],"class_list":["post-176773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-defense-procurement","tag-fail","tag-military","tag-naval"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}