As part of a broader initiative to increase efficiency, the U.S. secretary of defense has called for the Army to include the right to repair products in its procurement contracts, adding support to previous congressional efforts.
Under the heading “Acquisition Reform and Budget Optimization,” U.S. Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth said in an April 30 memo that Army Sec. Dan Driscoll must:
- Identify and propose contract modifications for right-to-repair provisions where intellectual property constraints limit the Army’s ability to conduct maintenance and access the appropriate maintenance tools, software and technical data.
- Seek to include right-to-repair provisions in all existing contracts and ensure these provisions are included in all new contracts.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts applauded the directive in a press release: “I pushed the Army Secretary to get right-to-repair in the Army done, and I’m glad he kept his word. This reform means the Army will be more resilient in future wars, and it will end the days of soldiers being dependent on giant defense contractors charging billions and taking months and months to get the equipment they need repaired.”
In addition to securing a commitment from then-nominee Driscoll in January, Warren also was able to get the Trump nominees for Navy secretary and military transportation to pledge to support servicemembers’ right to repair, she added.
In support of the measures, a Public Interest Research Group report published this month cited the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, which in June 2023 stated: “To effectively field and sustain systems and equipment, DOD must have flexibility in how it maintains its equipment throughout the product’s useful life. The Department strongly supports the concept of a ‘right to repair’ and believes it is important that the Department and its service members are able to repair their own equipment.”
The report, written by PIRG federal legislative director Isaac Bowers and Nathan Proctor, senior director of PIRG’s Campaign for the Right to Repair, provided a detailed analysis of the entities both for and against the initiative.
Warren has long been an advocate for the military’s right to repair devices. Last December, she and U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez introduced the “Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act,” in an effort to cut costs by reducing or eliminating “contractor-imposed restrictions on how they can diagnose, repair, and maintain equipment and weapons, making it difficult to conduct necessary fixes in the field without relying on contractors. These restrictions put military readiness at risk and can increase Pentagon spending on basic services and equipment.”
And in July 2024, legislators including Warren introduced Section 828 — “Requirement for Contractors to Provide Reasonable Access to Repair Materials” — into the Defense Reauthorization Act, a bill to provide military funding.
Section 828 required that procurement contractors agree in writing to provide “fair and reasonable access to all the repair materials, including parts, tools, and information, used by the manufacturer or provider or their authorized partners to diagnose, maintain, or repair the good or service.”
Industry opposition
The Potomac Officers Club, a membership organization for executives in government contracting, wrote in a recent analysis, “Right to repair has been one of the most contentious topics in government contracting for decades,” as contractors and the DOD seek to balance competing interests of profitability and cost-cutting.
In September, Warren formally asked government contractors to defend their opposition to such measures, saying the industry effort to block the right to repair “has no national security rationale: instead, it appears to be based on simple corporate greed.”
In questioning the industry, Warren invoked a July 2024 letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee from a coalition of defense contractors. That letter said the DOD “has not reported barriers to maintenance and repair that would necessitate such an over-reaching policy.”
The industry coalition went on to say Section 828 did not provide measures to protect proprietary information, and that it would enforce strict price controls for materials and information.
However, whether the Army’s procurement division can effectively negotiate such requirements remains to be seen, Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight, told Federal News Network earlier this month.
“It takes more work to make sure that you actually take possession of all of the intellectual property to which you are entitled, and it takes even more work on top of that to go back and renegotiate existing contracts so that you’re entitled to all of the intellectual property you need in order to maintain all your equipment,” he said.
A version of this story appeared in E-Scrap News on May 22.
