The late Marine Corps Commandant Robert Barrow famously noted that, “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.” Since Ulysses S. Grant commanded the first modern American war machine, our armed forces have overwhelmed enemies with logistical and technical superiority and our legendary ability to fix things on the go.
Who has not seen the movies with the crusty supply or motor pool sergeant or the petty officer wielding tools with his Popeye arms, keeping America fighting under any condition? Improvise, adapt, and overcome — or at least that's how it was.
Sadly, those days are long gone. Despite cost overruns, delays and rank inefficiency that it causes, the military now outsources its ability to fix and fight to hordes of contractors and Beltway bandits. The sergeant doesn’t fix trucks and tanks — a contractor does. Currently, because of strict requirements in defense contracts, troops are actually forced to rely on civilians to repair military vehicles, weapons systems, and even medical devices, instead of making repairs themselves.
To maximize profit under the guise of protecting intellectual property, companies have restricted the tools, parts, and technical data needed to maintain critical equipment. This results in soldiers and sailors who could easily fix a vehicle or troubleshoot a weapons system shipping the equipment back to the U.S. or else waiting for civilian technicians to fly in from thousands of miles away.
These delays can take weeks or months, with repair costs sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars for simple fixes troops could make themselves. This broken framework hampers our military readiness and is obscenely costly. Estimates suggest that returning to the military the right to repair the systems it alone must fight with will save taxpayers billions and save lives.
Fortunately, the Trump administration and Congress are about to restore sanity to the system.
Earlier this year, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll ordered that all current and future Army contracts guarantee the right for the Army to repair its own equipment. Congress is now working to codify and expand this by including provisions from the Warrior Right to Repair Act, sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
Contractors will be required to provide the Pentagon with maintenance instructions, technical data, and repair access necessary for the Department of Defense to sustain its own equipment without waiting on the original manufacturer, whether they are deployed or on U.S. bases.
This is a tested and proven model. If enacted, the measure would bring the Department of Defense in line with America’s auto market, where consumers have long enjoyed the freedom to choose how and where their vehicles are repaired.
In the civilian world, the right to repair is well established. Since 2014, a national memorandum of understanding between automakers and independent repair groups ensures that all repair facilities, whether independent garages or franchised dealerships, have equal access to the data and diagnostic information necessary to make repairs. That agreement remains in force today. And in 2023, the parties went further by signing the Automotive Repair Data Sharing Commitment, which expands on and strengthens this framework.
As a result, American car owners can repair their own vehicles or take them to independent repair shops, service chains or franchised dealers. This system has created consumer choice, fair competition, and protected safety standards for more than a decade — demonstrated by the fact that approximately 70 percent of post-warranty repair work done today is completed by independent repair shops.
Contractors will argue that providing the Pentagon with the right to repair will put an undue burden on manufacturers or that private companies' intellectual property rights will be threatened. Yet the automotive industry has safely managed this balance for years, sharing technical information while protecting truly proprietary innovations and maintaining successful and competitive companies. Similar safeguards can easily be implemented by the Pentagon and its suppliers.
Ultimately, the issue isn’t technical, it’s strategic. Our troops need the authority to repair their own equipment to safeguard military readiness, protect American lives and prevent billions in wasted taxpayer funds. Bipartisan members of Congress and the Trump administration have the rare opportunity to notch a win that will strengthen U.S. national security and reduce federal spending, and they need to get it done.
As Commandant Barrow might say, this about letting warriors be warriors.
Robert Wilkie served in the Trump administration as the 10th secretary of Veterans Affairs and as the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. He currently serves as chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute.
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