Despite its popularity and broad bipartisan support, right-to-repair provisions that would have given service members the ability to fix their own equipment in the field were stripped from the compromise version of the 2026 defense policy bill after industry pushback.
The House’s Data-as-a-Service Solutions for Weapon System Contracts provision, which would have required DoD to negotiate access to technical data and necessary software before signing a contract, was removed from the final text of the annual legislation released over the weekend. The Senate’s provision requiring contractors to provide the military with detailed repair and maintenance instructions was dropped from the bill as well.
Instead, the legislation requires the Defense Department to develop a digital system that would track and manage all technical data and verify whether contractors and subcontractors comply with contract requirements related to technical data. The compromise version of the bill also requires DoD to review all existing contracts to determine what contractors were required to deliver and what data DoD can access.
“It’s almost completely meaningless relative to ‘right to repair.’ It only addresses cases in which the contractors have failed to deliver or make available the data that is already in their contracts. It doesn’t address in any way whether the contracts themselves are sufficient to support service members’ right to repair,” Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told Federal News Network.
While this is not the first time Congress has stripped right-to-repair language from the National Defense Authorization Act, the 2026 defense policy bill is likely the most high-profile attempt to block the reform — this year, the proposal had gained momentum and wide support from the Trump administration, the House and Senate, and senior DoD leaders.
But defense lobbyists pushed back against the reform during the conference process. The National Defense Industrial Association, for example, said these bipartisan efforts would “hamper innovation and DoD’s access to cutting-edge technologies by deterring companies from contracting with the DoD.”
Eric Fanning, former secretary of the Army and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, said the right to repair provisions would “cripple the very innovation on which our warfighters rely.”
“Given that we had support in the House and the Senate on a bipartisan basis, and we had the support of the Trump administration and the secretary of Defense, I don’t know how to interpret this, other than to say that industry prevailed in their influence over Congress, and the NDAA now reflects the interests of the business community instead of the American taxpayers and service members,” Williams said.
For years, the military has struggled with contract-imposed restrictions on repairing and maintaining its own equipment and weapons, forcing it to rely on original manufacturers to conduct necessary fixes in the field, which is costly and time-consuming.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, for example, has become an outspoken critic of large defense companies — he previously said that defense contractors have “conned the American people and the Pentagon and the Army.” Driscoll recently highlighted a Lockheed Martin Black Hawk helicopter part that costs the Army $47,000 to replace because the manufacturer refuses to fix a control knob the Army could make for $15.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mt.) said in a statement they “support the Pentagon using the full extent of its existing authorities to insist on right to repair protections when it purchases equipment from contractors.”
Williams said while this is the chance for the Pentagon to exercise its existing authorities, without legislation that enforces consistency, it’s very unlikely that contracting officers will be able to effectively implement right to repair across thousands of contracts.
“I don’t want to let the Pentagon off the hook either. I believe that if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made this a high priority, he could ensure that we acquire adequate data. But he would have to make sure that every contract officer on every contract was way more diligent than they have been up to this point,” Williams said.
For now, the right-to-repair effort is likely stalled until next year. Lawmakers will vote on the NDAA one more time before it is sent to President Donald Trump for his signature.
“We will keep fighting for a common-sense, bipartisan law to address this unnecessary problem,” Warren and Sheehy said.
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