ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carl S. Ey, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, is the president and CEO of a service-disabled veteran-owned small-business concern, providing consulting services to the federal government as well as veteran charities. His 22 years in Army service included two combat tours. He also served 15 months as the director of Business Continuity at the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 2003, while serving as the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) Communications Battle Captain, I managed secure voice, video and data networks connecting Kuwait to Baghdad. The backbone of that system came from massive satellite rigs assembled by contracted technicians who worked under fire. Service members pulled security, ran convoys, and executed combat tasks while corporate experts kept the satellite infrastructure alive.

A decade earlier, in Somalia, the same contractor–military partnership delivered the technology that allowed us to fight and communicate. Integrating noncombatant specialists into tactical formations was never an option. It was a requirement, because warfighters fight and technology experts keep combat systems operational.

Congress is now considering a “right to repair” mandate in the National Defense Authorization Act. It would force defense manufacturers to hand over proprietary manuals, schematics and source code unless they can prove doing so would threaten safety or security. The proposal is marketed as a way to empower the Department of Defense. In reality, it will do the opposite.

It will weaken the industrial base.

Small and veteran-owned companies that produce critical sensors, hydraulics and fire-control systems rely on intellectual property protections to survive. If they are required to surrender proprietary data, many will stop competing for defense work. A shrinking pool of suppliers will drive up costs and slow innovation across the force.

It will hand sensitive information to foreign adversaries. Once technical data is forcibly distributed, China and Russia will not need to steal it. They will simply collect it, analyze it, and copy it.

It will fail on the battlefield. Troops who participate in “train the trainer” programs are not engineers. When a $20 million system goes down at 0300 in a remote combat outpost, a PDF manual and a call center are not solutions. The military needs access to the engineer who wrote the firmware. We embedded those experts in Iraq and Somalia because equipment failure in combat leads to mission failure and sometimes casualties. Remove the technical expert and complex systems will stay down longer, leak more information, and put more lives at risk.

The real obstacles to readiness are inside the Department of Defense. Depots are crumbling. Logistics pipelines are outdated. Information systems are inefficient. Skilled labor is in short supply. Layers of bureaucracy slow every repair cycle. The military already possesses statutory authority and most of the data it needs. Mandating more disclosure distracts from the real work of fixing what is broken.

True readiness requires partnership, not coercion. The solution is to buy the right technical data packages on day one, negotiate flexible support agreements, and embed manufacturer technicians with deployable units. These experts should be on the personnel manifest and treated as members of the team, just as we treated technical specialists in both of my combat deployments. The medical community already incorporates civilian clinical expertise into uniformed environments. The technology enterprise should mirror that model.

Instead of weakening the contractor–military partnerships that have won wars, Congress should strengthen them. Authorizing and funding deeper integration between manufacturers and operational units would increase uptime, protect sensitive systems, and preserve the industrial base that keeps our forces competitive.

The “right to repair” mandate, as written, will raise costs, shrink the supplier pool, expose sensitive information, and erode the collaborative system that has kept battlefield technology functioning when lives depended on it. Forcing the transfer of proprietary knowledge to service members without providing access to the experts who created that knowledge is a formula for strategic failure.

Congress should revise this provision before it becomes law. National security depends on it. Our warfighters deserve systems that work, support that arrives when it is needed, and a defense industrial base capable of sustaining victory.