Defense industry takes aim at ‘right to repair’ as NDAA decision looms

WASHINGTON — When Congress returns this week, leaders of the armed services committees will face a looming decision on “right to repair” legislation aimed at giving troops the ability to fix their equipment while deployed, but industry groups say the measure could have grave implications for intellectual property.

Both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act contain similar provisions that would give the Defense Department “default government purpose rights” for technical data and software — a paradigm under which the department has access to technical data, can use it to repair equipment, and can share it with third parties doing work on government contracts.

Industry organizations contend those new regulations would let the government pass on trade secrets and other proprietary information to competitors, eroding a company’s technical edge. 

Virginia Burger, a senior defense policy analyst for the Project on Government Oversight, said industry’s real primary interest is in preserving its bottom line. 

Restrictions on technical data can leave the Pentagon reliant on the original manufacturer for repairs, maintenance and replacement parts because the department lacks the rights to share proprietary information with competing contractors. As a result, a 2025 Government Accountability Office report found that data-rights shortfalls can contribute to vendor lock, drive up program costs and lengthen repair timelines.

Default government purpose rights would open up competition and force incumbents to offer better pricing — particularly on lucrative sustainment contracts that make up 70 percent of major defense programs’ life-cycle costs, Burger told Breaking Defense in an interview. 

“Something like ‘right to repair’ would be a major shift in that dynamic and give the military the upper hand when it comes to negotiating for repair costs,” Burger said. “It enables the Department of Defense to negotiate from a stronger position. And it decreases some of those monopolies that exist within contracts in the sustainment world.”

Technical data can include engineering drawings, manufacturing specifications and equipment manuals, while software rights can cover source code and related documentation. Under government purpose rights, the Pentagon would be able to share that information with other contractors for government work — excluding for commercial purposes, Matt Murphy, senior director of acquisition policy for the Aerospace Industries Association, said during an October event.

“If we go to default government purpose rights, what that could do for industry is disincentivize private funding of technology development because you’re surrendering IP to the government as a default,” he said. “When you look under the hood, it really is a pretty expansive authority for the government to share this information.”

The State Of Play

Both versions of the NDAA would provide the Pentagon with government purpose rights as the default, with companies only able to claim an exemption only if they prove “through clear and convincing evidence, entitlement to more restrictive rights.”

However, there are a few key differences between the House bill’s Section 861 and the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)-approved Section 804:

• The House language does not explicitly exclude commercial items and would apply only to future contracts.
• The Senate bill includes clawback provisions that would allow the government to reclaim funding from a company, should it find that the firm “unjustly” obtained more restrictive rights that resulted in it receiving a sole-source contract. 

The right to repair provisions in the House and Senate versions of the FY27 NDAA received broad bipartisan support in the armed services committees, bringing together unlikely political allies.

Reps. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., and Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., sponsored the amendment that was added to the House NDAA via voice vote. Meanwhile, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 27-0 to add right to repair language — which originated in a bill authored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tim Sheehy, R-Mont. — to its version of NDAA.

“The military should be able to repair its own equipment without waiting weeks or months for defense contractors to do the job,” Warren said in a statement to Breaking Defense. “These bipartisan reforms would strengthen military readiness and save taxpayers billions. I’ll keep fighting to make sure these commonsense reforms become law.”

Typically, language included in both the House and Senate version of the NDAA is considered a slam dunk for inclusion into the final bill. But despite bipartisan backing, right to repair is expected to be one of the most fought-over portions of the FY27 NDAA, with trade organizations and oversight groups locked into a lobbying blitz as lawmakers and staff hammer out a compromise version of the legislation.

Sources told Breaking Defense that the final decision on whether to include the right to repair provisions — or some version of them — will likely rest with the chairmen and ranking members of the armed services committees, known as the Big Four.

In a Sept. 1 letter to the armed services committee chairmen and ranking members, a collection of 15 industry organizations — including AIA, the National Defense Industrial Association and US Chamber of Commerce — advocated for Congress to revert to more moderate language in Section 842 of the House Armed Services Committee’s chairman’s mark.

Those provisions would require the Pentagon to name an “Intellectual Property Ombudsman” who would provide “independent, non-binding guidance” to contracting officers and companies on intellectual property matters, according to the bill text. The legislation would also establish a mediation process through which the Defense Department and industry could resolve IP disputes without going to court. 

The language in Section 842 “bring[s] government and industry to the table to settle IP disputes quickly in good faith,” the industry organizations stated in the letter. “Requiring default GPR for all contracts will hamper innovation and the Pentagon’s access to cutting-edge technologies by deterring companies from contracting with the Department.”

Most recently, the Professional Services Council — a trade group representing government contractors  — sent a Nov. 4 letter to HASC and SASC leaders expressing support for Section 842 and opposition to House Section 861 and the Senate Section 804. 

“These provisions raise concerns because they lack protections for privately developed technology, increase administrative and evidentiary burdens placed on contractors, and pose potential negative consequences for companies that develop and deliver innovative technologies to the defense market,” PSC CEO Jim Carroll wrote.

Meanwhile, POGO is arguing for the most aggressive outcome: A hybrid of both bills that includes the broad applicability of the House and the clawback mechanism written into the Senate version, it stated in a list of its NDAA policy recommendations published in September. 

“I think that would be the best option,” Burger said. “I also think that’s probably the least likely because industry lobbies heavily against this, and defense contractors have an immense amount of influence and pull over these things.” 

Given the bipartisan support, right to repair proponents are cautiously optimistic that some form of the House and Senate language will survive the conference process. But since right to repair provisions were stripped from the FY26 NDAA during the conference process, Burger said, “I don’t know if we can really assume that that’s a given.”

“That being said, my guess is they probably will pass something. Whether or not it is as strong … that those of us advocating for ‘right to repair’ want it to be, I think is the real question.”

Meanwhile, industry is hoping that there is still time to move the needle. 

“What we’re trying to understand: Is it that this language is immovable to members of Congress? Or can we propose new paths forward that address our concerns with [government purpose rights]?” Parker Chapman, AIA’s senior director of legislative affairs, told Breaking Defense. 

‘We’re Not Trying To Harm Industry’

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, Pentagon leaders have championed the right to repair as a vital tool for ensuring that troops have the technical data necessary to maintain and repair forward-deployed equipment. While in office, former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll led the charge as the department’s most vocal proponent before resigning in August.

“This is one of the most important things, and I don’t say this to be over the top,” Driscoll said in response to questions from Warren during a SASC hearing in May. “We, the US Army and the broader military must maintain the right to take advantage of all the new tools because if we don’t, our adversaries will, and we will be put at a meaningfully worse position.”

Following Driscoll’s departure from the Pentagon in August, senior leaders have said little about the specific right to repair policies in the draft NDAA bills. 

The White House’s statement of policy on the House NDAA language commends Congress for advancing the right to repair issue, but stops short of specifically endorsing the Goodlander provisions, stating instead that the Pentagon looks forward to working with Congress to refine the language. 

“The Administration is committed to partnering with Congress to guarantee that any right to repair requirements included in the FY 2027 NDAA balance the Department’s need for data delivery with preserving the intellectual capital of our industry partners,” the White House said in its July statement.

During an Oct. 20 event at the Hudson Institute, the Army’s chief legislative liaison, Jimmy Byrn, said that the service wants to guarantee that it gets the legislative authority to repair its equipment while ensuring that industry remains unscathed. 

“I’m confident that we can get to a good place on this particular issue,” he said. “We’ve been listening to industry about it, doing industry working groups and that type of thing to make sure that we’re addressing issues there. The main thing I just want to put out is that we’re not trying to harm industry.” 

Some in industry see the lack of explicit support for House Section 861 and the Senate Section 804 as a positive sign.

“In the conversations that we’ve had with the Department — it’s not like they’re saying we don’t like this at all — but they are recognizing that default government purpose rights is a very broad stroke approach to this problem, and isn’t exactly the solution that they’re looking for,” AIA’s Murphy told Breaking Defense in an interview. 

RTX CEO Chris Calio said in an October earnings call that he believed the government and industry would ultimately find a solution on right to repair, but added that there needs to be a balance between industry’s need to safeguard IP and the needs of the customer.

“We want to be supportive of our customers and their sustainment needs, but we’re also going to need the kinds of protections around IP and protections around the investments that we’ve made,” he said. 

For others in industry, the issue has a personal connection. Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer, told Breaking Defense that his unit wasn’t allowed to make a simple part swap on a broken generator when he was an active duty Marine deployed to a forward operating base in the early 2010s. 

“Fun fact: We did it anyway, and then got screamed at by someone,” he said.

But while he’s supportive of troops being able to repair equipment in the field, Sanders said industry needs more clarity on how certain parts of the NDAA language would be implemented. For instance, what constitutes a “clear and convincing argument” to allow contractors to retain data rights?

“I don’t think there’s an easy definition here, because right to repair for deployed generators or trucks is going to be different than small drones,” he said. “You’re going to have to do it on an individual basis on every contract, and you’re going to assume that like the contracting officer or the program manager … is going to have the technical skills to look at a big complex weapon system, and then define which of those parts should be right to repair and which should not.” 

Mandating that defense companies provide more technical data isn’t a panacea for the Pentagon’s readiness issues, said Moshe Schwartz, a defense fellow for the Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement. 

“The reason that we have poor readiness rates is not tech data rights. It is not intellectual property,” Schwartz said. “Even if the department had all of the tech data rights in the world, it would not meaningfully impact the readiness rates of our system.”

Instead, Schwartz argued that the Pentagon could be better served by updating its IT infrastructure, which has contributed to readiness snags such as a case two years ago where monthly parts orders from the Army were logged as being needed only every few months, delaying delivery of needed parts.  

The department also needs to do a better job ensuring that it forms concrete contractual agreements with companies for the intellectual property that it does need, he said. 

“There are things that they can do, short of seizing [all] data [by default],” he said. “What data do you need, and why do you need it? Frequently, I’ve heard people in the Department say, ‘Well, we need all the data for every contingency.’ Well, that’s not helpful.” 

Carley Welch contributed to this story.