Ford will be the first modern American warship built without urinals. There are several reasons for this. The Ford will have a smaller crew (by at least 20 percent) and more of them will be women. Currently, about ten percent of American warship crews are women, but the Ford crew will be at least 15 percent female. Since women sleep in all-female dormitories (”berthing areas”), a toilet (”head”) will now be attached to each berthing area (instead of being down the hall). Moreover, berthing areas will be more spacious (because of the smaller crew) and hold a third to half as many bunks as previous carriers. Finally, drain pipes for urinals more frequently get clogged than those coming from toilets. So eliminating the urinals means less work for the plumbers. There are a lot of other visible changes to enhance habitability and make long voyages more tolerable.
“A whole paragraph on toilets and urinals?”
I think it’s a very important paragraph. It gives you the mindset and philosophy of the previous administration in a nutshell. The same people who comment on MSNBC that the Coronavirus task force isn’t diverse enough are responsible for this.
I served 19 months on an LST built in 1953. I don’t think we had urinals even in the officer quarters. In the enlisted berthing compartments, there were sinks on one side of the passageway and on the other side there were two areas each with four toilets. There were two on each side facing each other. Helped promote comradery.
“A whole paragraph on toilets and urinals?”
Midshipman missing after being consumed by vacuum toilet
https://www.duffelblog.com/2016/06/midshipman-missing-consumed-vacuum-toilet/