The U.S. Navy’s new supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford has had more than its share of problems. The ship has a reported  23 new or modified technologies, a number of which have been problematic, to be kind. They are still working the bugs out of the electromagnetic catapults. The ammunition elevators are not working properly. The propulsion plant has issues. And the list goes on. 

One of the complaints has been about the urinals. It is not that they do not work. Rather, there aren’t any. The Navy says that this was intentional. As they say in the software business, this is a feature, not a bug. The accommodation blocks have been redesigned to more easily suit both male and female crews. Rather than designate male and female accommodation spaces, with and without urinals, the Navy decided to provide only water closets, making the toilets gender-neutral. 

While the flexibility of not having to reconfigure the toilets has its advantages, it also has costs. Urinals take up less space than toilets and are easier to keep clean. “[A toilet is] by far a less clean environment than a urinal. By far,” Chuck Kaufman, president of the Public Restroom Company, told the Navy Times, citing the fact that men tend to miss normal toilets more often than they miss urinals.

“What is a problem is [with a water closet] you have a very big target and we can’t aim very quickly,” he added, noting that the only way to ensure men didn’t miss was to make them sit down. Furthermore, Kaufman explained, toilets take over twice the space of urinals. The Navy Times noted that about 18 percent of the Navy’s personnel are women. 

While some may be annoyed by the lack of urinals by all reports at least the toilets are functioning. This was not the case when USS George H W Bush, the tenth of the Nimitz class carriers was delivered in 2011. The carrier suffered from widespread plumbing failures, which, at times, rendered the entire ship without a single working head for its crew of 3,200, with an additional 2,400 serving in the air wing. By comparison, a lack of urinals doesn’t seem so bad.

Thanks to Ulrich Rudofsky for contributing to this post.