You can try and get a relief so you can go to the head, but it's generally frowned upon if your that guy that always needs a head break, and in the middle of the night, no one wants to wake up so you can go pee.
Edited to add: Also, what will people do? They will drink less than they should to avoid the humiliation. On top of a tired crew you will get also a dehydrated one. This is a surefire recipe for bad things to happen.
I agree with the need to always keep training in top shape.
There is no naval enemy on earth that is even remotely competitive with the US in any regard.
Iran? North Korea? ISIS? What enemy?
Russia has no global naval projection, it can barely sustainably push beyond the Black Sea with its surface ships. Their sub fleet is a medium threat. The US is also not at war with Russia, they aren't actually an enemy. There is no war coming with the Russians, they're only good for boogeyman status. They've got a perma stagnant economy (Australia will surpass it soon) and melting social-economic position (see: pension cuts making Putin unpopular), crimping their ability to continue to spend on anything military (most of their military is badly dilapidated, so they've taken to focusing very narrowly because they can't field a high quality force across the board any longer; this is also why Putin puts so much effort into screaming about his magic super weapons that are unstoppable, their conventional military is rotting).
Could China one day be a naval enemy? Sure. At some point in the next 20 years there could be a naval conflict near Chinese territory. The US isn't winning that near-shore conflict short of going to a WW2 level output of ships. The dumbest thing the US could do from a navy perspective is get into a naval conflict with China close to their shores 10-20 years from now. It wouldn't matter how well trained the officers are, it's an inherently losing position.
Ship to ship maneuverability and tactics, even? How can you be so sure? Do you think that it's impossible for a US ship to lose a "dogfight" at sea in Asia as tensions escalate? If the lack of training is as bad as they say, I have a hard time imagining them winning one.
I find this hilarious in the context of the incident,
Who would win: the greatest navel power on earth operating a highly sophisticated and technologically advanced destroyer, or one container ship?
Just because there isn't an enemy now doesn't mean that you can just forgo training. They shouldn't sink to a lowest common denominator, but rather strive for a higher standard. They're hardly in top shape according to the report
They have more Admirals now that ships.
It's a good thing the US is still friendly with Europe. Everything I've read about their (admittedly much smaller) navies is that they're far more professional and better run, and look at the Americans as unprofessional and even dangerous when they have to do training exercises with them.
Of course, this shouldn't be too big a surprise; just take a trip to Europe and see how much better day-to-day stuff is run. Public transit is excellent and much larger in scope, unlike America where the subways are falling apart and Amtrak is a joke. Airports are smoothly run, unlike America where they aren't even paying the security people (TSA) to come to work. Bridges in Europe aren't dilapidated and literally falling down like they are in America.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Norway managed to sink one of their own frigates.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/11/13/norwegia...
Germany doesn't have anything left to sink.
Japan also has a pretty sizable Navy with over 120 ships.
None of Germany's 6 subs were operational at the beginning of last year. That may have changed since, but the underlying reasons, poor planning and lack of spare parts, are still there. Only 9 of 15 Frigates were operational and the lead of their new class of frigates, the F125, failed sea trials. The Navy subsequently refused to commission the ship. Admittedly, these are not necessarily crew training issues, but crews without operational ships are not likely to maintain a desirable level of combat readiness. These issues aren't just limited to the Navy; ground forces are also in a bad state.
France and the UK are in better shape, but the Royal Navy in particular has holes in its capabilities where the US Navy is expected to fill in. They're regaining some capabilities with their new (and only operational) carrier, but it's not even clear if it has a functional air wing yet as the F-35B's they purchased only began carrier operations this past September. Another carrier is under construction, but it may be awhile before their carrier based naval aviation becomes combat effective.
The remaining European Navies are pretty small and pretty limited in what they can do. They tend to focus on ASW with some surface warfare capabilities, but are again dependent upon one of the larger Navies for air defense.
Japan may well be the most combat effective of the bunch, but that's a completely different theater of operations.
This isn't intended to be a rah-rah, USA forever sort of rant. Everyone, including the US, seem to have let things slip to the extent that combat effectiveness is becoming questionable.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/germanys-navy-dead-26...
https://www.dw.com/en/no-more-missions-for-germanys-navy-war...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/20/german-armed-for...
Otherwise if there's a war what are these crews going to be doing? Pissing themselves on the bridge, or have a bottle in one hand and their dick in the other while trying to man their station, possibly while undergoing hard maneuvers?
This seems to be some fundamental failure of crew management. Crews should be allocated in such a way that there's time for toilet breaks.
I can't say I have any experience with the military, but from listening to "Life and Work on HMS Enterprise"[1], they are constantly running realistic exercises (in their case, mostly simulating fires and people overboard, since it's a research vessel).
[1] http://omegataupodcast.net/277-life-and-work-on-hms-enterpri...
But yeah it is a failure of crew management certainly - at very least there should be a solid "relief" procedure that can handle it - and even stable in the long odds of a crewman getting killed out of line of sight by say a glancing hit.