The Honorable Roger Wicker
Chairman
Senate Armed Services Committee
425 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Mike Rogers
Chairman
House Armed Services Committee 2469 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Jack Reed
Ranking Member
Senate Armed Services Committee
728 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Adam Smith
Ranking Member
House Armed Services Committee
2264 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

November 24, 2025

Dear Chairmen and Ranking Members:

We salute the efforts of both chambers of Congress to include meaningful right-to-repair language in each of your National Defense Authorization Act bills to ensure service members have access to the tools and data necessary to repair their equipment. We strongly encourage you to move forward with the Senate’s Section 836, in lieu of the House’s Section 1832 that would require repair data to be provided in a data-as-a-service arrangement.

Data-as-a-service would keep repair data in the hands of contractors, only allowing military personnel to access it over a network. While data-as-a-service suits many commercial and consumer applications, we believe it will prevent the military from ensuring that critical repair data is available when and where it is needed.

We expect our service members to go to places far from the comforts of home and sometimes even civilization whenever they are needed, and to stay until their mission is accomplished. We don’t factor internet connectivity into our expectation that they prevail. That’s necessary regardless of whether combat, weather, secrecy, or business disruptions make network services unavailable. We need our service members to be able to maximize their chances of success by organizing operational data, including repair data, in advance — according to our needs as a nation, not the preferences of lobbyists.

Data-as-a-service gets in the way of these vital operational concerns and puts our service members needlessly at risk.

As one Marine veteran put it, “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.”

Thank you for your consideration. We hope you will do the right thing for our country and for those who defend it.

Sincerely,

Project On Government Oversight
The Chamberlain Network
Performance Racing Industry
Specialty Equipment Market Association
Taxpayers for Common Sense
U.S. PIRG