Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire No urinals on new carrier

The new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford has all sorts of high-tech gear equipped for 21st century naval warfare. But there is one thing that male sailors will notice is no longer available: Urinals.



For the first time, every bathroom on the Ford — known throughout military circles as a head — is designed to be “gender-neutral,” meaning all of the urinals have been replaced with flush toilets and stalls, Navy officials say.



The vast majority of the 5,000-plus sailors who will deploy aboard the carrier Ford are men, as women account for only about 18 percent of sailors in the Navy.







Bathroom design experts say water closets with seated toilets are less sanitary and take up far more space than wall-mounted urinals.



Nevertheless, the Navy says there are advantages to eliminating urinals.



It will allow the Navy to quickly and efficiently change a head’s assigned gender, so depending on the ship’s demographics at the time, berthing areas can be switched between male and female to accommodate the crew’s needs.



“This is designed to give the ship flexibility because there aren’t any berthing areas that are dedicated to one sex or the other,” Operations Specialist 1st Class Kaylea Motsenbocker told Navy Times recently.



Every head on the Ford is being integrated into a berthing, she said.











As such, the Navy claims that gender-neutral heads will make living aboard the Ford more convenient for sailors.



Every berthing area on the ship has a head attached to it, and some heads service multiple berthing areas, giving sailors more privacy.



“So if this space was needed for males, we could shift the females to other berthing areas and make this all male without any modification being necessary,” Motsenbocker said.



It’s a decision that comes as a surprise to many professionals who design restrooms.



“[A toilet is] by far a less clean environment than a urinal. By far,” said Chuck Kaufman, president of the Public Restroom Company, an organization that specializes in designing bathrooms.






For men, traditional seated toilets are farther away, making them harder targets to accurately focus on.



Thus, men who use a water closet are more likely to miss the bowl and hit the floor, says Kaufman.



He says that when men are obligated to pee in water closets, urine tends to build up on the floor, leaving an abysmal stench.



“A urinal is a target,” said Kaufman. “What is a problem is [with a water closet] you have a very big target and we can’t aim very quickly.”



The only way to ensure men accurately aim into a toilet bowl is to force men to sit down, which is unlikely to happen, said Kaufman.



Moreover, sitting down to pee makes trips to the bathroom take longer.



Kaufman estimates that the average trip to the urinal takes a little under a minute. Meanwhile, peeing at a sit-down toilet takes twice as long, he said.



Whatever convenience that is gained by being able to morph men’s rooms into women’s rooms would also be lost in the amount of space that water closets, and the stalls around them, take up, he said.



When he is designing a bathroom, Kaufman says he is required to allot around 1,500 square inches of space for a urinal. A toilet needs more than 3,300 square inches.



For a ship like the Ford, which cost upwards of $13 billion, every inch of space matters tremendously.



“Why would you want the ship to be bigger just for fixtures?” said Kaufman. “You can get twice as many urinals as water closets.”



For now, the Ford will be the only Navy ship in the fleet that is entirely outfitted with gender-neutral bathrooms, said Bill Couch, a Naval Sea Systems Command spokesperson.



Regardless, urinals on aircraft carriers may be a thing of the past.

Wouldn't it be even more efficient to have male personnel go over the side?

NIMITZ wept, again

That would be sexist. Everyone should "go" over the side.

You really need to improve your sensitivity. Oh, and stop using common sense, it's the Federal Government we're talking about...

Ed

may be this is the reason:

Uh, do Muslims sit when they pee? Or do they just like the privacy of a stall?

Zumwalt was all about modernizing the Navy but I do not think he would have agreed with this...

Nothing like getting off a mid watch in the engine room and going topside to take a long piss off the fantail and have a smoke.

Seems to make sense, even in a "mens room" you have to have a sit down toilet for taking a dump. Saves you from plumbing two toilets.

I've questioned the efficiency of a urinal myself. Seems like the same plumbing but can only tackle one task.

Typically.




Dave

How about water conservation?

Takes less water to use a urinal.

Unless they abide by the "if its brown, flush it down....if its yellow, let it mellow".

"""Thus, men who use a water closet are more likely to miss the bowl and hit the floor, says Kaufman."""" Did we fund this study??...YOU can't hit a minimum 12"bowl of water with your pee shooter at 18/24" inches....... U got issues

Salt water flush...

we have waterless urinals at work , may be the navy could use the same technology :

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/sustainable/waterless-toilet4.htm

P.

This will all become obsolete soon as Melennials enter the service more.

I'm investing heavily in Pampers.

When was the last time you took a piss in 45 foot seas?

the damn carrier has all sorts of problems. Generators, catapults, and now this silly crap. Liberals have done what the Japanese, Nazis and commie bastards could not do. Neuter the US Navy.

Yeah, you'd think a first in class, multi-billion dollar ship would have zero problems. Thanks for another clueless post.

The Ford's problems are nothing a lot of the old guard in Naval Aviation told them would happen. The urinal issue albeit funny but irrelevant aside, the catapult/arresting gear issues go FAR beyond "problems". Just like the A-12, F-35, LCS, etc, the Navy was sold a bill of goods by the builders on future technology that just isn't "there" yet. For one, the catapult recovery time is way too slow, thereby severely curtailing launch sequences. Further, any kind of combat damage is going to take a lot more than lagging and duct tape to fix as steam catapults get fixed with. The bottom line is the Navy went with less man power (which also means less redundancy for repair/damage control parties and whatever else combat might bring)because it's cheaper and will EVENTUALLY require less maintenance. It's a huge mess with no short term fix in sight. Same with the F-35, overweight, underpowered, a logistics nightmare due among other things the size of their engines are so big they can't be brought aboard by existing methods), a maneuvering slob, not to mention single engine. The LCS, another example of the tail wagging the dog. With this "gem" the Navy said "we need a ship with a crew no larger than X", so they built a ship around a crew so what you have is a ship with very limited range and a narrow combat capability window. The new Frigate (Zumwalt class, now there's a hint with the name 'Zumwalt) is shaping up to be another mess, but the Navy has bigger fish to fry apparently, namely urinals, anti-homo sensitivity training and paying for add/cut-a-dicktomy. But hey, just as long as I get my pension...

Rollin'😉

Depends if a goat will fit in the stall, most likely.