A US PIRG report reveals bipartisan support for allowing the military to fix its own equipment amid rising concerns over repair delays and costs.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans support legislation ensuring the US military can repair its own equipment—outnumbering opponents by a margin of nearly 7 to 1—according to a new report by US PIRG.
The report, Military Right to Repair, outlines the impacts of repair restrictions on the US armed forces and features the results of a poll asking Americans whether Congress should pass a law to ensure the military can fix its equipment.
Manufacturers routinely refuse to provide access to the parts, tools, or information required to conduct repairs, instead pushing customers—even the US military—to use their brand-authorized service providers. The survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted by Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group in April found that voters overwhelmingly support Congress passing a law to ensure the military can access necessary repair materials. Among respondents, 74% support Congressional action, including 53% who strongly support Congress passing such a law. Just 11% oppose it, and 15% are undecided.
“When you rely on equipment for your life and safety, you want multiple options for fixing it when it breaks. That’s true for farmers and consumers, and our research shows it’s vital for American military personnel,” says US PIRG federal legislative director Isaac Bowers in a release. “The right to repair is something that Americans increasingly understand—and the more they hear about it, the more they want action to remove barriers to fixing our stuff.”
The new report follows US Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll, on April 30, calling for the Army to “[s]eek to include right to repair provisions in all existing contracts and also ensure these provisions are included in all new contracts.”
Right to Repair for Military
In addition to showing support for right to repair reforms, the report outlines why service members need these protections. PIRG notes in a release that a newly released story from recently retired Master Sergeant Kerry Clark highlights the waste and delays associated with repair restrictions. MSgt Clark (Ret) reported that his drone training program was forced to ship broken drones out for repairs, at a cost of $26,000 apiece, for an issue which he later discovered was just a loose cable connector.
PIRG says these inefficiencies, scaled across all military equipment, cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Analysis by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) calculates that the US military spends tens of billions of dollars each year to maintain equipment.
“Contractors are ripping off the federal government and putting service members at risk by often requiring the military to rely on contract workers to fix broken equipment. This unnecessarily inflates the cost of maintenance and leads to delays for crucial repairs,” says POGO acting vice president of policy and public affairs Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette in a release. “It’s clear that it’s time for a change. The US military needs right to repair.”
US PIRG and POGO are working with a bipartisan group of legislators to pass the Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act, which would ensure that all branches of the military have what they need to repair often-unreliable equipment.
“Technological progress was supposed to lead to better products, but we’re seeing more broken and unfixable devices,” says US PIRG chairman Douglas H. Phelps in a release. “Not only is the right to repair a commonsense solution, [but] this poll shows that it’s also a common-ground solution.”
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