Senators throw weight behind military right to repair • The Register
A bipartisan pair of Senators is so happy with the US Army’s right to repair policy that they want to enshrine it in federal law as the standard across military branches.
US Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) introduced a bill in the Senate today that, if passed into law, would require all future military purchase contracts to include a clause requiring contractors to provide “fair and reasonable access” to parts and information.
Fair and reasonable access, according to the Warrior Right to Repair Act of 2025, means providing military branches with access to parts and instructions needed for diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of equipment at a rate consistent with what it would charge a commercial partner.
Not only does the bill mandate that contractors make parts and manuals available as part of all future deals, but it also requires a review of all existing contracts to ensure they are modified to incorporate the new repairability rules.
The approach – forcing repair conditions on contractors both for existing and future contracts – is essentially the same one that the US Army announced it planned to take in May, and which the Navy signaled it was interested in pursuing as well. The new bill would make it universal across the armed forces.
“The Warrior Right to Repair Act of 2025 would extend the Army’s right to repair policy to all the services, standing up for taxpayers and service members,” the senators said of their proposal.
Right to repair problems for the military are, in many ways, like those faced by farmers dealing with John Deere’s obstinate resistance to self-repairability. The Navy, Warren and Sheehy said, has had to fly repair contractors out to ships at sea to make simple fixes to ships, while the Marines have had to send engines back to the US to have repairs performed they could have done on site. The USS Gerald Ford had weapons elevators offline for more than four years, waiting for the manufacturer to make repairs that could have been addressed by the crew.
According to the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), giving the military the right to repair would be a really good way to cut down on a lot of that bloated spending that the folks in charge have been complaining about, making it a natural bipartisan winner.
“For decades, the DoD has signed purchase agreements with contractors that have prevented it from repairing its own weapons systems and equipment,” PIRG said. “That’s cost American taxpayers billions of dollars in bloated sustainment costs, impeded military readiness and endangered servicemembers’ lives.”
PIRG said its own survey of US voters showed widespread support for military right to repair, with nearly three quarters of those polled in favor of letting the troops repair their own stuff.
“It’s about time we stood up to Pentagon contractors that are squeezing every last cent from us at the expense of our national security,” Warren said. “It’s common sense for members of our military to be able to fix their own weapons.” ®
