Facing a grounded aircraft, disabled vehicle or offline system in an urgent mission environment, military engineers cannot wait for a vendor representative to diagnose the problem or build a software patch from afar. In modern warfare, nearly all equipment is connected, computerized or software enabled. Systems that were once purely mechanical now depend on software to operate at full capability. As a consequence, repairing issues increasingly requires more than manual tools. Engineers need access to technical data, diagnostic tools, software interfaces, code and system information to understand what has failed and to restore performance safely.

When engineers or maintenance personnel cannot access those systems without vendor support, repair delays quickly create readiness gaps on the battlefield, impairing mission objectives and putting service members at risk.

Right to repair must become repair readiness

Such risks explain why the military right to repair debate has returned to Congress, with a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing for contractors to provide the data and materials the military needs to maintain its equipment. Without the right access, information and tools, engineers cannot diagnose and address issues in real-time. Delays grow when fixes rely on a single contractor, and particularly when equipment is deployed, geographically dispersed or operating in contested environments.

The Warrior Right to Repair Act has brought renewed attention to these challenges and highlights the operational limits of letting vendors restrict access to systems and technical data. But access, while critical, solves only one part of the repair problem affecting mission readiness.

The military must also understand, validate and safely modify its systems under mission conditions.

Access is only the first constraint

For military systems that are increasingly software-enabled, gaining access is not the same as being able to repair them. Even when teams gain direct access to software, diagnostic data or technical documentation, they may still face a complex system that is unfamiliar, proprietary or decades old.

Even regularly updated systems can include millions of lines of code added over countless development cycles, often with outdated documentation that no longer reflects the software’s current state. Contractors change, institutional knowledge leaves, and fewer people know how to maintain mission-critical codebases and how all components fit together.

With mechanical systems, opening the hood might provide enough information for an engineer to assess what to safely adjust. However, with software-based systems, even highly skilled engineering teams need to answer difficult questions before making a software patch, configuration change, data update or other core adjustment. What other systems rely on this component? Which internal dependencies could the change affect? Could the fix disrupt interoperability, safety, cybersecurity or mission performance?

The system understanding gap

Military engineers have the skills and training to repair complex systems and equipment. The challenge is that they cannot always move quickly inside expansive, legacy or poorly documented software environments where full system context remains hidden.

Without that context, the pressure to restore operational capacity quickly can create new risk. A fix in one part of the system could disrupt another, affect interoperability or introduce an unanticipated security concern.

Understanding modern system repair is the missing half of the right to repair debate and should stay top-of-mind for lawmakers addressing mission readiness. Access lets engineers enter the system, but only proper understanding provides the confidence to act once inside.

Engineers need secure system intelligence

This distinction is especially important in deployed, contested or tightly controlled environments. In those settings, waiting for contractor support can introduce delays, affect mission continuity or create operational risk. Yet, many commercial software development tools do not fit the conditions under which military systems often operate. Requirements like continuous internet and cloud connectivity, external model access, and the ability to move code outside the development environment may not work for critical systems deployed on classified networks, in air-gapped environments or tightly protected infrastructure.

Reading a manual is also no longer sufficient to understand how a system works. In legacy environments, documentation may be missing, incomplete or outdated. Existing documentation may even describe the original design of a system that has since received decades of updates and field modifications. Engineers need a current view of the system. Tools that analyze a codebase to generate documentation can help them quickly map software architecture, dependencies and operational context without relying on slow requests for vendor knowledge. Such tools can also reveal the impact of a proposed change before implementation.

Repairability should come with acquisition

As Congress and the Defense Department push for expanded technical data rights and repair authority, they should weigh capability at the same time. Expanded access to technical data, source code and system information delivers truly only when servicemembers can understand, assess and safely modify those systems.

The DoD should also build repairability into the early stages of the acquisition lifecycle, not after deployment, once problems emerge. Repair strategies, documentation sourcing, and modernization plans should consider how engineers will use data during real system failures, because a system that future teams cannot understand, modify or validate will create operational risk.

Gaining expanded access to the inner workings of military equipment is only the beginning. In mission environments, teams often need to restore systems or address emerging risks under significant time pressure. When codebases are large, complex or decades old, speed depends on having the tools and processes to understand the system, assess potential changes and act with confidence. The right to repair is important, but the ability to repair is critical.

Dr. William T. Colleran is CEO of Adronite.

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