JUNE 11, 2025 – Navy Secretary John Phelan told senators during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill today that he believes sailors should be able to repair the hardware they are trained to operate without having to wait for contractors to do the work.
The issue concerns contract agreements that often contain language preventing service members from performing repairs themselves because of intellectual property rights.
In the private sector, the movement to allow owners of equipment to repair it themselves, rather than being forced to have the manufacturer perform the work, is known as the “right to repair.”
“I am a huge supporter of ‘right to repair,'” Phelan said, explaining his support comes after observing the issue in the fleet.
“I went on the [USS Gerald R. Ford] carrier; they had eight ovens — this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day,” Phelan said. “Only two were working. Six were out [for repair].”
The secretary said he was surprised that on a ship with so many people and with so many mouths to feed, there wasn’t someone on board with the ability to repair the broken ovens. It turns out, he said, the sailors could fix the ovens but weren’t allowed to do so; instead, they had to wait for the contractor to do the work.
Similarly, Phelan told lawmakers that when elevators stopped working aboard the ship, the manufacturer had to be called in.
“They have to come out and diagnose the problem, and then they’ll fix it,” he said. “It is crazy. We should be able to fix this.”
Phelan said intellectual property issues related to military hardware are a concern.
“We end up paying for a lot of things that we don’t control, and we need to change that,” he said. “And, so, contracting, in general, is something we’re looking at very hard, and we need to really try to ensure going forward we control our IP, and we have the ability to fix things because if we’re in a fight, how do we … fix it then?”
In April 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued guidance regarding the transformation of the Army. Part of that guidance included direction for the Army to attempt to include “right to repair” provisions in existing and future contracts, creating a potential roadmap for the Navy.
On Capitol Hill, June 4, 2025, before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll explained how the Army is addressing this challenge.
“On a go-forward basis, we have been directed to not sign any contracts that don’t give us a right to repair,” Driscoll said. “On a go-back basis, we have been directed to go and do what we can to go get that right to repair. … We hope that anyone listening to us who hopes to pitch us a contract going forward will look back at their previous agreements they’ve signed with us, and if they’re unwilling to give us that right to repair, I think we’re going to have a hard time negotiating with them.”
By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News