Defense contractors are successfully lobbying to gut military right-to-repair provisions in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, sources tell WIRED. Instead of empowering servicemembers to fix their own equipment, lawmakers are likely to replace those provisions with a subscription-based "data-as-a-service" model that would force the military to pay contractors for repair information they already own.
The military industrial complex just scored a major victory over taxpayers and national security readiness. Right-to-repair provisions that would have empowered US servicemembers to fix their own equipment are being quietly stripped from the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, replaced instead with a subscription model that forces the military to rent repair access from the same contractors who built the equipment.
Sources familiar with ongoing NDAA negotiations tell WIRED that provisions enabling servicemembers to repair drones, fighter jets, and even basic equipment like Navy vessel stoves will likely be removed entirely from the final bill language expected next week. The replacement? A "data-as-a-service" subscription plan that essentially makes the military pay twice - once for the equipment, then again for the right to fix it.
The original provisions had rare bipartisan backing. Senator Elizabeth Warren's Section 836 in the Senate version drew from her Warrior Right to Repair Act, requiring contractors to provide the Department of Defense with "the rights to diagnose, maintain, and repair the covered defense equipment." Republican Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, introduced similar language in Section 863.
But defense lobbying groups mobilized hard against losing their repair monopoly. The National Defense Industrial Association released a white paper in September arguing that forcing contractors to share repair information would "limit innovation" by exposing intellectual property. Eric Fanning, CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, claimed letting servicemembers fix their own equipment could "threaten the backbone of US defense."
"Our real concern is that the proposed legislative language amounts to an eminent domain push by the federal government," Margaret Boatner, AIA's vice president of national security policy, told WIRED. "It requires defense contractors to disclose a substantial amount of proprietary IP just to compete for contracts."
The lobbying appears to have worked. "The House Armed Services Committee chair [Rogers] and ranking member [Smith] are sympathetic and pushing to replace the right to repair provision with this idea of data as a service, which is basically renting the military what they already sold them," a person with knowledge of the conference negotiations told WIRED.