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Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Guarantee Military Right to Repair Its Equipment
(www.warren.senate.gov)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
So the military has been bound by the same handcuffs that McDonalds is with it's ice cream machines?
It was messed up that McDonalds agreed to that. It's TERRIFYING that the group in charge of our military ever did.
Yeah its absolutely wild. Even Louis Rossman has done some videos about the military's lack of right to repair. Its insane to me that you'd buy a multi-billion dollar jet like the F-35, and legally be unable to repair it without calling in (and paying a hefty service contract for) someone from Lockheed or Pratt and Whitney to troubleshoot it. That can't be sustainable if you do end up needing to send a ton of these things into combat
Not to mention the toxic incentives it creates when the vendor is the only one allowed to repair the thing they sold you. If they get a paycheck every time they repair the thing they build, then obviously they're gonna build that thing to break.
Exactly. This is completely insane. The DoD has the negotiating leverage to write these right to repair requirements into their RFPs, specifications, and contracts. The idea that their procurement offices simply failed to do this boggles my mind.
Back in the war, if you had a winning design, you were required to license it, full drawings included, to many different manufacturers at fair prices. The Defense Production Act is still on the books, and it contains a lot of power to control the economy. Why is DoD handcuffing themselves?
Corruption
One of the videos in question has a direct call to action to support this bill