US Senator Warren probes defense groups' opposition to 'right to repair'

By Jody Godoy

(Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked defense industry groups how much their members make from contracts that withhold replacement parts and tools, pushing back on their opposition to a bill that would give the U.S. military a "right to repair" its own equipment.

Warren asked the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) and three other industry groups in a letter on Wednesday how much they have spent lobbying against the provision included in the Senate's 2025 proposed defense spending bill.

Top defense contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics, are among the groups' members.

The provision would require contractors to provide the Department of Defense with "fair and reasonable access" to parts, tools and instructions, in an attempt to avoid costly and time consuming efforts to seek repairs from proprietary service providers that Warren said decrease military readiness.

"Right-to-repair restrictions waste taxpayer dollars and place service members at risk," Warren wrote, adding that members of the military stationed across the world, including in active combat, "should not have to rely on a company thousands of miles away" to fix broken equipment.

The advent of 3D printers has made it possible for the military to fabricate and fix many of its own parts in the field. But in many cases the original equipment manufacturers are entitled to remove field repaired parts to charge for the replacement - or mandate that original parts be installed while the equipment goes unused.

The NDIA, National Association of Manufacturers, Aerospace Industries Association, Professional Services Council and others wrote the U.S. Senate and House Armed Services Committees in July, saying the "right to repair" provision is unnecessary and would discourage their members from selling to the DOD.

Warren pushed back on that assertion in her letter to the three groups, citing public examples of expenses and delays resulting from contracts that required members of the military to wait for authorized repair services, and in one case, ship engines from Japan back to the U.S. rather than repair them on site.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts also wrote to the DOD, asking for more examples and how they affected its missions and budget, and asked whether the agency will seek to use a law that allows for the transfer of intellectual property developed using federal research funds.

Warren asked the groups and the agency to respond by Oct. 11.

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy)