US Secretary of the Navy advocates for sailors' "right to repair" equipment

US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said he believes sailors should be able to repair the hardware they are trained to operate without having to wait for contractors to do the work.

Phelan raised the issue during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, June 10. He said the issue concerns contract agreements that often contain language preventing service members from performing repairs themselves because of intellectual property rights.

In the private sector, the movement to allow owners of equipment to repair it themselves, rather than being forced to have the manufacturer perform the work, is known as the "right to repair."

"I am a huge supporter of 'right to repair,'" Phelan said, explaining his support comes after observing the issue in the fleet.

"I went on the [USS Gerald R. Ford] carrier; they had eight ovens — this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day," Phelan said. "Only two were working. Six were out [for repair]."

The secretary said he was surprised that on a ship with so many people, there was no one on board with the ability to repair the broken ovens.

It turns out, he said, the sailors could fix the ovens but weren't allowed to do so; instead, they had to wait for the contractor to do the work.

Similarly, Phelan told lawmakers that when elevators stopped working aboard the carrier, the manufacturer had to be called in.

"They have to come out and diagnose the problem, and then they'll fix it," he said. "It is crazy. We should be able to fix this."

Phelan said intellectual property issues related to military hardware are a concern.

"We end up paying for a lot of things that we don't control, and we need to change that," he said. "And, so, contracting, in general, is something we're looking at very hard, and we need to really try to ensure going forward we control our IP, and we have the ability to fix things because if we're in a fight, how do we ... fix it then?"