Army Secretary Nominee Supports Military Right to Repair

Military Right to Repair received a strong show of support from Dan Driscoll, President Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of the Army, during his January 30, 2025 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. When asked by Senator Warren (D-MA) if he would “work with this committee to identify more opportunities where the Army can save money and time by making their own parts and fixing their own equipment,” he replied “[i]f confirmed, unequivocally, Senator.” 

We have noted before that the United States military shares the same Right to Repair problems that plague everyday Americans. And we also noted that Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) and Senator Warren (D-MA) had introduced amendments to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez and Sen. Warren also introduced the Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act of 2024 in the House and Senate in the last Congress. U.S. PIRG supported those bills and anticipates supporting similar legislation in the new 119th Congress. 

The Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act is common-sense legislation to reform Department of Defense (DOD) procurement rules that will ensure military service personnel are able to repair the equipment they rely on during daily operations, training exercises, and on active combat duty. Repair access means less reliance on pricey service contracts.

Military Right to Repair could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars

Currently, the DOD spends hundreds of billions of dollars to procure weapons and equipment from military contractors and are then subject to repair restrictions that leave them reliant on the manufacturer for repair. These repair restrictions include contractual provisions that void warranties if servicemembers repair their own equipment and others that allow contractors to retain in full the intellectual property (IP) rights to operations, maintenance, integration, and training (OMIT) data.

Without any competition for the repair of essential equipment, service costs have skyrocketed. As noted by Thomas Ayres, general counsel of the U.S. Air Force, sustainment can be as much as seventy percent of programs’ expenditures and reliance on single companies does not allow the DOD to “unleash the creativity of small businesses, startups and others who have historically been locked out of contributing innovative ideas to defense programs.”

Repair restrictions degrade military readiness and puts lives at risk

All of us rely on technology to do our work or get through the day. We believe that people should be allowed to fix their equipment — when we can’t, it can create all manner of problems. 

Contractors’ repair restrictions degrade military readiness. In order to repair equipment, our military needs to train on fixing it both as part of routine maintenance and during combat exercises. As Captain Ekman has detailed, when Marines cannot repair a generator during a joint training exercise or maintenance workers have to ship engines back to contractors in the United States for repair, they lose “the opportunity to practice the skills they might need one day on the battlefield, where contractor support is inordinately expensive, unreliable or nonexistent.” 

Inevitably, the repair restrictions currently imposed by contractors will put the lives of our Armed Forces personnel at risk. When mission critical equipment breaks on a battlefront, or on any mission where logistics are constrained or contested, our service members are the ones who have to fix it. Any barriers to repairing equipment in these austere environments – including lacking the opportunity to develop the necessary repair skills – is unacceptable.

These points were emphasized by both Mr. Driscoll and Senator Warren during the nomination hearing. Senator Warren noted that last year when the Army needed a new cover for a safety clip it was told by the contractor that it would take months to procure and cost $20 a clip. But, because the Army had kept Right to Repair restrictions out of the contract, it was able to 3D print the clip in under an hour for sixteen cents. 

Mr. Driscoll agreed with Senator Warren that “the ability of the DOD to get the parts we need in hours, maybe minutes instead of months, and for nickels instead of dollars” would assist readiness and national security and added later that in an “engagement with a peer like China, being able to repair our parts in areas around the world will be crucial” and that “having six-month delays… and paying 100x the rate… is not scalable in an actual conflict.” In response, Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) stated “That was a very good answer, Mr. Driscoll.”

If you want to watch Mr. Driscoll’s exchange with Senator Warren, a YouTube clip is available here.