The USS Abraham Lincoln is one of the most expensive machines ever built by human hands.
It’s a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that can launch fighter jets off its deck while doing 30 knots into a headwind.
It also, apparently, has the sewage system of a 1970s Motel 6.
The Lincoln recently found itself in the news for reasons that had nothing to do with F-35s or freedom.
Reports surfaced of plumbing failures so persistent that the crew was dealing with overflowing toilets and a smell that sailors described in terms usually reserved for war crimes.
This is a ship with a nuclear reactor that can run for decades without refueling, but the toilets have a shelf life measured in hours.
Here’s the part that really grinds my gears.
The Navy has been fighting a losing battle against carrier plumbing for years.
It’s a recurring theme, like a horror movie franchise where the monster is just a clogged pipe and the final girl is a 19-year-old sailor with a plunger and a dream.
The root cause is a combination of low-flow toilets designed to save water, sailors who treat the head like a garbage disposal, and a system that was never engineered for 5,000 people living in a steel box for months at a time.
Turns out you can’t shame a grown adult into not flushing a wet wipe.
What makes this truly American is the cost.
The Lincoln cost roughly $4.5 billion to build, and that’s before you factor in the air wing, the escorts, and the lifetime supply of Drano.
We can build a floating nuclear city that projects power across the globe, but we cannot build a toilet that survives a deployment.
Somewhere, a Chinese admiral is reading this and laughing into his perfectly functional teacup.
The Navy’s official response has been a masterpiece of bureaucratic understatement.
They acknowledge the issue, they say they’re working on it, and they remind everyone that the mission continues.
And to be fair, the mission does continue.
It just does so with a faint aroma of regret wafting up from below decks.
But let’s be honest about what this represents.
This is the military-industrial complex meets the Home Depot clearance aisle.
We spend trillions on stealth and hypersonics, and then we get humbled by the same basic human need that took down the dinosaurs.
You can’t drop a MOAB on a clogged sewer line.
You can only send a sailor down there with a snake and a prayer.
Closing opinion: The Lincoln is a marvel of engineering and a testament to American power, but it’s also a reminder that the smallest things break the biggest things.
If we can’t keep the toilets working on a $4.5 billion ship, maybe we should stop acting surprised when the rest of the world laughs.
Final Thoughts
It’s not glamorous, but neither is a carrier full of people who can’t use the bathroom.