Over the last few decades, more and more companies have been discovering the financial wonders available to them if they separate the items they sell from the ability to repair those items … so you buy a widget but if it breaks, you have to pay the manufacturer to get it fixed. You have no option to fix it yourself — even if you have the technical know-how and the necessary tools — nor can you find a cheaper alternative, because the manufacturer has blocked any possible competition to their often highly profitable scam revenue stream. It’s bad enough in the civilian marketplace, where consumers are demanding the “right to repair” from legislators because the cost and inconvenience are far too high.
Now imagine you are onboard a US Navy ship in the western Pacific and some critical piece of technology breaks down … but you can’t fix it yourself because the manufacturer sells repair services and will have to be paid to send out a civilian repair crew with the necessary tools and parts. No need to imagine it: it’s the situation the US military is finding itself in more and more often:
If you want to get an otherwise reserved and laconic farmer to get excited and talkative about a subject, ask them about the issue of “right to repair“.
… Wilson and others accuse John Deere of blocking farmers and everyday mechanics from fixing equipment without going through John Deere dealers. Although the company doesn’t prohibit users from fixing equipment themselves, the lawsuit claims it locks users out of repairs because of the limited access to software that only dealerships can access. The lawsuit says that makes most fixes nearly impossible. A lot like cars, the farming equipment is equipped with sensors. The John Deere tractors, for instance, run on firmware that is necessary for basic functions, according to the lawsuit. If something is wrong with the equipment, a code will appear on a display monitor inside the machine. The suit says interpreting the error codes on tractors, for instance, requires software that “Deere refuses to make available to farmers”.
Right-to-repair advocates say the digitization of agricultural equipment — with its various computers and sensors — has made self-repair almost impossible, forcing farmers to depend on the manufacturers. Wilson, for example, said he has to rely on his local John Deere dealership, which he said takes longer and charges more than an independent repair worker.
… a pending lawsuit the Federal Trade Commission filed Jan. 15 claims the company falls short of that promise. The complaint accuses it of unlawful business practices that have “inflated farmers’ repair costs and degraded farmers’ ability to obtain timely repairs”.
“I would have some farmers close to tears recalling the time they lost a whole harvest because they weren’t able to fix their own tractor and weren’t able to go to a local repair shop,” said former FTC Chair Lina Khan, who helped launch the suit.
OK, it is bad enough to have to wait as through time and experiencing a degrading quality of harvest to repair your tractor … but what if instead of Mother Nature, you have to deal with 50,000 screaming Chinamen?
Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) is trying to get ahead of this problem.
U.S. defense contractors have launched a lobbying and public relations blitz to defeat a provision in the Senate-passed NDAA that would set strict new rules for how the Pentagon accesses their intellectual property.
The issue is among the last unresolved matters facing House and Senate negotiators who aim to reconcile before December the House and Senate fiscal 2026 NDAAs.
The Senate’s so-called right-to-repair provision states that the Pentagon may not, with certain exceptions, enter into a contract unless the deal requires the company to provide the government with the data needed to operate and sustain the equipment.
That data means a lot to the contractors because it is worth many billions of dollars over time. To a servicemember it also means a lot: Being able to fix a weapon can mean the difference between life and death. And the cost of such repairs is a major driver of defense budget growth, experts have long said.
These are the same defense primes who are spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks, and already have a track record of contract maintenance that is not impressive.
Update, 21 November: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
Ran into a situation like this when I was on active duty. I was able to repair the part but got screamed at by a Chief because I wasn’t the technical crew from the manufacturer. Nevermind that the piece was required for us to *fly air support for ground troops in Iraq right that second*. Almost got into a fight over that one. My opinion, but if a piece of equipment is being used by the military, they should always have the right to repair it themselves. You can’t wait for that s-. Of course, the fact the military doesn’t get to retain the manufacturing rights for equipment that they paid for the development of also ticks me off.
Same goes for anyone with any equipment, really. You bought it, it’s yours. Like with property (land), the idea that someone else can tell you what you are and are not allowed to do with it (so long as nobody else is being injured) just pisses me off.
Comment by Killbait — November 20, 2025 @ 17:22
The US military, being part of the US government, will probably eventually get some kind of fake’n’gay “right to repair” (but only in combat or near-combat conditions, only during non-peak hours, only during months without an “R”, etc.). The rest of us? We’re probably f*cked because judges and regulators are far cheaper to buy when your corporation has deep enough pockets and zero morality.
Comment by Nicholas — November 20, 2025 @ 19:48
[…] WHAT HE SAID: Military necessity and the “right to repair”. […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHAT HE SAID: Military necessity and the “right to repair”. — November 21, 2025 @ 02:27
Speaking from the other side of the problem, sometimes this issue is not so simple.
Providing high performance capability sometimes means using high performance test equipment and unique sub-assemblies. Getting the most out of components can mean that the sub-assembly must be aligned with the rest of the system in order to function as intended (if not at all because of certain assumptions in fault detection) – simple module swaps will not work or at least work with reduced performance. I know this from painful experience. Component variation can make it impossible to create swappable assemblies… unless you are willing to trade away performance or increase the complexity and cost (no such thing as a free lunch).
I have worked on an effort to provide the US military second-source repair capability, where I tried hard to provide better than what was available in our own facility. The capture of tribal repair knowledge was a project all in itself. While we were able to produce and repair the product, explaining it to outsiders required a lot of documentation updates.
Then the DOD requirements added a new wrinkle of computer security – I had never seen the ‘secure’ version of WINDOWS until this effort. All the code had to be re-written to not depend on company network resources and address the security-performance trade-offs. At this point, I was trying to improve the software to provide better diagnostic capability beyond what was locally available – to the point of getting push-back by management for ‘no WIBNIF’ (wouldnt it be nice if). I saw this a necessary for repair personnel totally inexperienced in our product’s quirks to have a chance to successfully repair it. The software rebuild was likely a third of the cost of the program byeond the test equipment and support materials.
Finally, the test equipment necessary to perform the testing was a particularly expensive part of the program. After seeing the depot repair facility, I realized that it was unlikely that the government would have at hand the equipment to just do it themselves. Decisions made a decade in the past based on available equipment in the company now becomes expensive requirements for standing up new repair capability.
Comment by LeptonFields — November 21, 2025 @ 05:32
Supplying the US government is a privilege not a right.
Comment by Robert Arvanitis — November 21, 2025 @ 09:35
demanding the “right to repair” from legislators because the cost and inconvenience are far too high
It seems a lot like a monopolistic practice.
Comment by GWB — November 21, 2025 @ 09:40
This has been an issue for a very long time. It’s why so many contractors ride boats and go to deployed locations, no matter the service. I rode ships as a contractor for 3 1/2 years, though I was a contractor providing direct SPAWAR support, not from the manufacturer.
You bought it, it’s yours.
Comment by Killbait — November 20, 2025 @ 17:22
Obviously you haven’t been paying attention the last 15 years. You’ll OWN nothing and you’ll like it.
But that’s certainly how it should be, whether it’s hardware or software or “IP”. It doesn’t mean you can hack it or copy it and sell it, but it should mean it’s YOURS, to do with as you please.
(BTW, I also think software – because it’s a machine, not a novel or a song – should be a patent. Once it passes a certain point, anyone should be able to copy it and resell it. The lobbyists screwed up IP rights a lot when they got the DMCA passed.)
Comment by GWB — November 21, 2025 @ 09:54
I worked for a military contractor for 30 years doing repairs on complex equipment. I have also managed repair depots and negotiated repair contracts. It is not a simple issue. We had Army programs where the contractor performed all repairs. The contract spelled out the number of spare units and required 100% operational availability and it worked; no aircraft was ever down due to the contractors equipment. When a unit failed it was immediately swapped out for a good one.
I have also worked on Navy programs where the Navy insisted (contractually) on the ability to repair their own equipment. We provided them the same equipment, software and data as used in the contractor repair depot. The Navy repair depot was never able to maintain operational availability rates comparable to the contractor repair depot. The turnover of service personnel meant that they could never retain the knowledge base needed to perform the repairs effectively.
Comment by Dougger — November 21, 2025 @ 13:38