WASHINGTON — U.S. defense contractors have launched a lobbying and public relations blitz to defeat a provision in the Senate-passed NDAA that would set strict new rules for how the Pentagon accesses their intellectual property.

The issue is among the last unresolved matters facing House and Senate negotiators who aim to reconcile before December the House and Senate fiscal 2026 NDAAs.

The Senate’s so-called right-to-repair provision states that the Pentagon may not, with certain exceptions, enter into a contract unless the deal requires the company to provide the government with the data needed to operate and sustain the equipment.

That data means a lot to the contractors because it is worth many billions of dollars over time. To a service member it also means a lot: Being able to fix a weapon can mean the difference between life and death. And the cost of such repairs is a major driver of defense budget growth, experts have long said.

‘Squeezing’ the military

The NDAA argument’s ferocity in recent days reflects those stakes.

On Friday, Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Eric Fanning penned an op-ed in the Washington Times arguing that the Senate provision would “cripple innovation” in the defense business.

Supporters of the Senate’s right to repair provision say it’s a way to ensure the armed services can maintain their weapons at reasonable cost. The White House and top Defense Department leaders have endorsed the principle of ensuring the U.S. military has what it needs to repair its weapons, though some of them acknowledge that devilish details have yet to be set.

In an April memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Army to include right-to-repair provisions in new contracts and modifications to existing deals “where intellectual property constraints limit the Army’s ability to conduct maintenance and access the appropriate maintenance tools, software, and technical data, while preserving the intellectual capital of American industry.”

The Senate language was written by two Armed Services Committee members, Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Tim Sheehy of Montana.

Warren, in an email response to a query on Friday, said the support of Hegseth and other military leaders suggests her provision is the right answer for the armed forces.

“Military leaders, service members, the White House, and hundreds of small businesses all agree these bipartisan right to repair reforms are desperately needed,” Warren said via email on Friday. “The giant defense contractors fighting these reforms are more interested in innovating new ways to squeeze our military and taxpayers than strengthening our national security.”

Earlier this week, Warren made public a Nov. 5 letter she had sent to another contractor group, the National Defense Industrial Association, pointedly calling its opposition to her provision “dangerous and misguided.”

In her letter, Warren asked the group for information about its lobbying on the issue and how much its member companies earn on military repair work.

‘Chilling message’

Defense industry control over data rights has sometimes kept service members from having the information they need to repair a system on the front lines, Warren and others have said.

And companies have on occasion charged the government exorbitant prices to get parts or services, because without access to a system’s data, the work cannot be performed by the government nor put out for competition to other companies — so-called “vendor lock.”

On the other hand, the defense industry develops weapons and other military gear not just with government funds but also with the industry’s own money, and companies need to see a return on their investment.

“If Congress forces contractors to hand over their intellectual property, it sends a chilling message to innovators and investors: Your hard-earned breakthroughs aren’t safe,” Fanning wrote in his op-ed. “Why would the best and brightest risk investing in new defense technologies if their proprietary data can be handed off to competitors or third parties?”

The ‘crown jewels’

The Aerospace Industries Association said in response to a query on Friday that the Senate provision would compel contractors to share proprietary intellectual property, including software and diagnostic tools, with the government and third parties.

“This threatens the innovation pipeline, especially for small, mid-sized, and commercial firms that rely on IP protections to justify R&D investments,” the organization said.

Likewise, the Professional Services Council, a trade group that represents hundreds of federal contractors and more than 1 million employees, expressed strong opposition to the Warren-Sheehy proposal in a previously unreported Nov. 3 letter on NDAA acquisition overhaul proposals that was addressed to Armed Services leaders.

“A blanket provision requesting all intellectual property on a contract will not lead to better outcomes,” said the letter, signed by James W. Carroll, the group’s chief executive officer.

Rather, he said, “it will result in less participation from the commercial and nontraditional contractors who cannot cede control over their carefully developed and closely held ‘crown jewels’ that translate into their competitive advantage. Simply put, intellectual property developed by companies is what keeps them in business, allowing them to offer new, innovative solutions to the government.”

‘Data as a service’

The defense contractor groups instead support a provision in the House-passed NDAA that would make access to the data available to the Defense Department “as a service.”

Such information would be made available to the military, the House bill says, via any of several methods: “electronically, in-person, or machine-to-machine encryption.”

Fanning, in his op-ed, appeared to allude to that provision when he recommended “tailoring licensing agreements on a contract-by-contract basis to maximize the long-term interests of the U.S. government while incentivizing and respecting industry innovation and investment.”

But critics describe this as akin to subscribing to a music service for a price that is subject to change, with the songs themselves residing with that company, not the user.

The critics say it is better for the armed forces to purchase the data at the outset of a contract and be able to use and organize it as they wish.

“The Senate’s version of right-to-repair gets warriors the information they need to repair their own equipment when and where they need it,” said Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. “The House’s version risks information being unavailable during wartime, when forces are in the field, or if the vendor goes out of business.”

Virginia Burger, a former Marine Corps captain who is a policy analyst at POGO, is concerned that accessing digital repair data online via a subscription model could create electronic signatures in far-flung places — which she said might expose U.S. forces’ positions.

“If the ‘data-as-a-service’ model requires internet connectivity to reach the information needed to maintain or fix equipment, we’ve all but doomed those forward operating in a combat environment to work with broken equipment,” Burger said in an email.

‘Love and attention’ needed

The White House Office of Management and Budget, in a Sept. 9 statement of administration policy on the Senate NDAA, offered guarded support for the Senate provision. The OMB statement said the Trump administration supports the “intent” of the Warren-Sheehy provision and “appreciates the opportunity to continue working with the Senate to refine the language.”

The administration, it said, “is committed to partnering with Congress to guarantee that any right to repair requirements included in the FY 2026 NDAA balance the Department’s need for data with preserving the intellectual capital of our industry partners.”

In a July House Armed Services Committee hearing on defense purchasing policies, Chairman Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., asked Pentagon acquisitions undersecretary Michael Duffey, “How are you going to balance this need that we have to be able to repair our own equipment and at the same time protect the privately funded intellectual capital that these companies put into these systems?”

Duffey said the data as a service provision in the House NDAA is an “innovative” approach, but he, like OMB, suggested more work lies ahead to get it right.

“Finding a balance between preserving the intellectual property and providing the department with the access we need to data is a challenge that we’re undertaking now, and we look forward to working with you in the committee to identify what is the sweet spot of balancing both those needs,” Duffey said.

Rogers said his committee’s language “still needs some love and attention, so we would urge your participation in that process.” He said the NDAA would be an “evolving product.”

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