US Navy Backs Right To Repair After $13 Billion Carrier Crew Left Half-Fed By Contractor-Locked Ovens (theregister.com) 117
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: US Navy Secretary John Phelan has told the Senate the service needs the right to repair its own gear, and will rethink how it writes contracts to keep control of intellectual property and ensure sailors can fix hardware, especially in a fight. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Phelan cited the case of the USS Gerald R. Ford, America's largest and most expensive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which carried a price tag of $13 billion. The ship was struggling to feed its crew of over 4,500 because six of its eight ovens were out of action, and sailors were barred by contract from fixing them themselves.
"I am a huge supporter of right to repair," Phelan told the politicians. "I went on the carrier; they had eight ovens -- this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day. Only two were working. Six were out." He pointed out the Navy personnel are capable of fixing their own gear but are blocked by contracts that reserve repairs for vendors, often due to IP restrictions. That drives up costs and slows down basic fixes. According to the Government Accountability Office, about 70 percent [PDF] of a weapon system's life-cycle cost goes to operations and support. A similar issue plagued the USS Gerald Ford's weapons elevators, which move bombs from deep storage to the flight deck. They reportedly took more than four years after delivery to become fully operational, delaying the carrier's first proper deployment. "They have to come out and diagnose the problem, and then they'll fix it," Phelan said. "It is crazy. We should be able to fix this." "Our soldiers are immensely smart and capable and should not need to rely on a third party contractor to maintain their equipment. Oven repair is not rocket science: of course sailors should be able to repair their ovens," Kyle Wiens, CEO of repair specialists iFixit told The Register.
"It's gratifying to see Secretary Phelan echoing our work. The Navy bought it, the Navy should be able to fix it. Ownership is universal, and the same principles apply to an iPhone or a radar. Of course, the devil is in the details: the military needs service documentation, detailed schematics, 3D models of parts so they can be manufactured in the field, and so on. We're excited that the military is joining us on this journey to reclaim ownership."
Further reading: Army Will Seek Right To Repair Clauses In All Its Contracts
"I am a huge supporter of right to repair," Phelan told the politicians. "I went on the carrier; they had eight ovens -- this is a ship that serves 15,300 meals a day. Only two were working. Six were out." He pointed out the Navy personnel are capable of fixing their own gear but are blocked by contracts that reserve repairs for vendors, often due to IP restrictions. That drives up costs and slows down basic fixes. According to the Government Accountability Office, about 70 percent [PDF] of a weapon system's life-cycle cost goes to operations and support. A similar issue plagued the USS Gerald Ford's weapons elevators, which move bombs from deep storage to the flight deck. They reportedly took more than four years after delivery to become fully operational, delaying the carrier's first proper deployment. "They have to come out and diagnose the problem, and then they'll fix it," Phelan said. "It is crazy. We should be able to fix this." "Our soldiers are immensely smart and capable and should not need to rely on a third party contractor to maintain their equipment. Oven repair is not rocket science: of course sailors should be able to repair their ovens," Kyle Wiens, CEO of repair specialists iFixit told The Register.
"It's gratifying to see Secretary Phelan echoing our work. The Navy bought it, the Navy should be able to fix it. Ownership is universal, and the same principles apply to an iPhone or a radar. Of course, the devil is in the details: the military needs service documentation, detailed schematics, 3D models of parts so they can be manufactured in the field, and so on. We're excited that the military is joining us on this journey to reclaim ownership."
Further reading: Army Will Seek Right To Repair Clauses In All Its Contracts
Geez, total BS they can'y fix it themselves ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:5, Interesting)
Its the military - just fscking repair the thing. What are the oven company going to do, sue the US Navy or try and reclaim the ovens? Good luck with that. Perhaps its time someone in navy command grew a spine.
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Re: Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:2)
Re:Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if our military unilaterally exercised a 'right to repair' for commercially available items, soon enough they would find that no manufacturer that relied on service revenue would offer them to the military, and if they did, likely for substantially higher costs, to 'recover' that lost service revenue.
Beyond the simple 'we bought it, we own it, we need to fix it', there is the somewhat simpler imperative - in war, you succeed or fail. Failure is costly. Unable to feed your crew, do you withdraw? And what are the consequences of that withdrawal? Failure is not an option, and that is not a platitude.
It's a failure of our military that they permit such things to occur at all. Not perhaps the Navy, but other branches, and for the Navy perhaps onshore, too much has been delegated to civilian contractors. Food service is one obvious example. And a common explanation I have heard is that enlistment is so challenged that there are not enough personnel to do 'all that'. Oh, downstream of failed leadership, I think. Leadership is crucial.
If you've paid attention, you know that McDonalds has had trouble keeping ice cream machines running, being hostage to the manufacture and software. For a frikin ice cream machine. Stupid.
And if you're aware of that, you might also be aware of John Deere masking every effort to prevent farmers form repairing their equipment, which during harvest can result in hours waiting for a technician, and lost crops. Lost money. Inexcusable. And again, software.
Right To Repair is going to be essential going on, the simplest things are becoming complex. Home automation suffers from vendor lock-in, and when the support revenue stream dries up, they capriciously 'end of life' items, and that's that, you're abandoned. No promise prevents this.
Our military needs to require this and enforce such contracts. To do otherwise is to risk their troops' lives, and ours.
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The military would sign the check tomorrow and twice on Sundays.
Re: Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:2)
They already do. As we know, however, there are no promises. Software support can be withdrawn in a moment. Spare parts, not in inventory. It's really not even about money I'm afraid, the military will pay. But will the vendors even honor their contracts, or just say 'but a new one'... If a new one exists.
I think I'm making this seem as complicated as it is.
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This is why it should be demanded that the software involved be open source. There is absolutely no excuse for some application failing silently (i.e., almost everything on Windows) or throwing out some inane error message. At least with something like a Linux application I can {s,l}trace the thing and have some vague idea where it might be failing. In Windows, stuff just goes tits up and says something stupid like "This program has stopped working..."
Imagine being under fire and dealing with this. "Vampire
Re: Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:2)
Do you actually know the connection between open source software and random inexplicable and enigmatic error messages? No you don't, there isn't one. Open source software for military systems has a great deal of appeal and makes a lot of sense. You must not get out much if you think open source software has better error messages or even error handling necessarily. As with all software, it's only as good as those who develop it. If not open source, at least the military should have access to the source.
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Do you actually know the connection between open source software and random inexplicable and enigmatic error messages? No you don't, there isn't one. Open source software for military systems has a great deal of appeal and makes a lot of sense. You must not get out much if you think open source software has better error messages or even error handling necessarily. As with all software, it's only as good as those who develop it. If not open source, at least the military should have access to the source.
It is typical with Windows that a program fails and you get some garbage like "Error 0x87e0000f" or, more often, "This program has stopped working..." So I go into the event logger and look, and if I'm lucky get some idea what the hell happened, but I can't fix it. With something like Linux, you get "Segmentation fault." Okay, whatever. The difference is with open source (in this case example Linux) I can then go run a trace on the program and find out where the hell it's dying. Then I can work around it or
Re: Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:2)
Well, one point is that your typical combat user probably doesn't know how to run a trace and work through a seg fault. More importantly, however, military software can be pretty expensive because it's not built to be fixable. It's built not to fail. Flight control systems don't generally present much in the way of error messages, they can't fail. Even common everyday stuff can give you trouble, stories of command centers on Harley Burke cruisers giving up Windows blue screens. That's pretty inexcusable but
Harley Burke cruisers? (Score:2)
Forget it. He's rolling.
Harley Burke cruisers (Score:2)
Maybe you mean Arleigh Burke . Its a class of destroyer, not a cruiser. (Although they carry anti-air, anti-ship and anti-sub weapons and a helo, so they can be used in place of cruisers especially in a carrier strike group where the CVN has the role of flagship)
Re: Harley Burke cruisers (Score:2)
Correct. Or, not correct, autocorrect and I keep mixing them up.
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Do you actually know the connection between open source software and random inexplicable and enigmatic error messages?
Expecting unpaid people to design it well or fix it for free. ;)
Re: Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:2)
Or work for NASA...
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Actually, if our military unilaterally exercised a 'right to repair' for commercially available items, soon enough they would find that no manufacturer that relied on service revenue would offer them to the military,
And companies that sell hardware would step in, gladly, and gobble down their share of the hundreds of billions of dollars the military spends on hardware every year.
Sounds like a win to me.
Re: that's a retarded response (Score:2)
Sure. That explains the current dilemma, with most of those ovens inoperable... You misunderstood.
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Its the military - just fscking repair the thing.
What if it's in the software/firmware? Navy techs got locked out because the controller detected a hardware failure and put the oven in a "safe" mode. Now you need vendor expertise and/or special tools to reset it. Because it's a modified civilian version and they can't afford the liability of some h.s. dropout stoner "fixing" an oven at Papa Johns and burning the place down.
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Oh, oh. It appears that I've made light of the Highest Holy Sacrament of some.
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1) Learning how to repair it doesn't happen because of the contracts; during war, when nobody will care they will not have any experience repairing it.
2) no service manuals = slower more error prone repair.
3) Whole part vendor replacement; when it is not made to be repaired at all and they simply replace whole chunks or the whole item... it isn't worth the labor to dismantle everything to get to what should be an easy to replace component. Don't forget highly specialized tools!
4) After the war, you know som
Re: Yes, but not for the reason you think (Score:1)
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sue the US Navy or try and reclaim the ovens?
Yes. Wait you weren't joking were you? What makes you think the government is just free to ignore contracts it engages in? They get sued all the time for this. There's a whole section of law dedicated to suing the US government. https://www.justice.gov/archiv... [justice.gov]
Put them in a room (Score:2)
with 5000 Navy enlisted personnel who haven't had enough to eat.
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You can waive just about any right by signing a contract.
Re: Geez, total BS they can'y fix it themselves ! (Score:2)
Re: Geez, total BS they can'y fix it themselves (Score:2)
You didn't offer me anything and a comment is not a signature, so no and no.
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And this is where the federal legislation has to go. I can easily see Congress making the requirement only for military agencies, in which case, the only companies bidding for the "right of repair" will be companies willing to forgo a repair monopoly. A repair monopoly or a ban on product repair is as damaging to consumers as a standard monopoly. And all this corporate repair practices stem from "intellectual property" laws which never was implemented to aid product monopolies. Just tell these "intellec
china masters will not let them have the source co (Score:2)
china masters will not let them have the source code and other tools needed to build an DRM free firmware.
But the Navy can hack them with armed forces ready repel any repo men
Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they have these troubles getting it repaired during "peace time", imagine the problems if the equipment is actually in a theater or war.
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"imagine the problems if the equipment is actually in a theater or war."
I don't know where the Ford is stationed right now, but at least a couple of the Navy's CVN's are in areas where they could get into combat (Eastern Med, Red Sea)
(There is a war on you know)
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CVNs are a high value target. They are always in theater, even at dock.
Re: Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score:2)
For a carrier Skipper there are no abstractions in this matter. The ship they command is of the greatest value in the Navy and quite possibly the single most valuable and useful asset in all the military. If someone could get on the dock, gain access to the vessel, and place, even the most minimal IED, there are many who would consider that to be a great victory. A day's delay in deployment could be useful or detrimental. The only similar object our military has, similar in value and purpose, would be nucle
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To your point, my brother was a United States Marine (part of the Navy) and had to go up to the submarine base at Bangor, Washington for a medical thing when he was still in. He knew something was up when he got to the base and saw the Marine guards at the front gate had rifles with them - that only happens when there is enhanced security posture at the base, and the reason for that posture was that a SSBN was in-dock, and had the missile hatches open for maintenance. And when that happens, the whole base
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Indeed. Whoever let that into the contracts should face a court-martial for sabotaging service readiness.
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Military. Industrial. Complex.
whoever added that clause got a sizeable bonus.
Their Trumpian replacement will double the subscription fee
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Probably. Hence add corruption and maybe treason to the charge.
Re: Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score:2)
I approve this plan.
Re: Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score:2)
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I imagine that's more a commentary on the fact that the, "Service Contractor," was taking so long to get out there and do the repairs.
Re: Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score:1)
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No, the service level agreement should account for a military warship not being conveniently in the dockyard.
Fly to an airport close to where the carrier is, and I'm sure the US Navy will be more than willing to give you a helicopter flight to the boat in order to fix their fucking ovens.
This entire situation stinks of graft.
"oven" ? (Score:2)
and define "oven"!
They must have *staggering* capacity to feed a crew of 5,000 with just six of these contraptions!
Very long conveyor systems? or ???
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If the problem i
Re: Can't Repair in Peace time? (Score:2)
I suspect it would be, "Damn the contracts, full speed ahead!"
Who approved that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who exactly approved a design/contract that prevents repairs during deployment? That's quite literally insane for a fighting vessel.
Someone needs to be fired/investigated and held accountable.
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"[S]ome other company altered the deal afterwards."
Pray they do not alter it any further.
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'broken' depends on which side of the wrench you're holding
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They don't read contracts for their purchases any more than you do.
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Especially since the entire point of having an aircraft carrier powered by naval nuclear reactors is to optimize the amount of time it's NOT in port.
This whole arrangement is ridiculous and stinks of corruption.
There ain't no Sanity Clause (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't need a "right-to-repair" clause. Right to repair needs to be a basic part of the law - a right of any owner of any thing, not just on a one-off contractual basis.
The DMCA and WIPO treaty should be fixed or done away with unless we all can repair what we buy.
Re:There ain't no Sanity Clause (Score:5, Insightful)
And calling it right to repair is sort of a misnomer because it limits scope. Right to ownership is the real issue. You buy it, it's yours. Period.
Re: There ain't no Sanity Clause (Score:2)
And calling it right to repair is sort of a misnomer because it limits scope. Right to ownership is the real issue. You buy it, it's yours. Period.
Right to repair is a dumb name but I'm sorry, ownership is even dumber, and it sets a lower bar. You break it, you own it, that was easy! ... that's not what you want.
Right to repair actually means - without breaking the warranty or support agreement, plus the availability of tools and documentation, at least for independent repair shops. It doesn't necessarily have to be easy or cheap because many things are too specialized.
If you want to buy a gray market commercial oven and grab a wrench, you own full re
Ahahahahahaha (Score:2)
That contractor obviously got wayyyy too greedy. Nice how at least some of these cretins eventually kill their own repulsive business model.
Re: Ahahahahahaha (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: Ahahahahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Allowing a customer to service their own stuff while still being responsible for the maintenance contract is a potential nightmare.
No, it is not. You write the contract so that if the customer fucks it up it's their problem, and if you have to undo things that they did when you get there, they have to pay for it.
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And that works about as well in practice as the Magusson-Moss warranty act. Electronics makers still put the little sticker on the bottom of devices saying "warranty void if opened" and denying warranty claims. Because who is the authority on the cause of the problem? The maker. Supposedly they should know better than anyone and to say otherwise you have to say so in court.
Re: Ahahahahahaha (Score:2)
That's the opposite situation.
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if the customer fucks it up it's their problem
Ummm...this. Except worse.
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And I should point out that in either case, the manufacturer gets to say what's your fault even if it isn't true - at least without wasting a lot of time and resources to prove otherwise.
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This is the difference between a lease/subscription type contract and a support contract. Frankly the former where it comes to something like ovens on a navy ship should not really be under consideration.
It should be sell the government the equipment, installation, and training. Second sell them a support contract that states things like, we will have any parts required availible at on of the following locations withing X hours (Navy more likely to be able more things around world effectively than anyone
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That reminds me of an actual deployment. USAF, our backup generator had a blown regulation system. Our solution was literally that whenever we had to go onto it, we'd station an airman at the generator manually turning the adjustment knobs to keep it at 240V@60Hz.
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Allowing a customer to service their own stuff while still being responsible for the maintenance contract is a potential nightmare.
I see you've never owned a car or rented a house.
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Sunds like you are looking for an excuse. In actual reality, the supplier has no responsibility for an user-botched repair.
The Navy and McDonald's (Score:2)
Sounds like the Navy has the same problem with their ovens as McDonald's franchisees have with their ice cream machines... These restrictive service contracts due to IP is ridiculous these days.
Who ever approves... (Score:2)
Anyone who has approved even a single piece of military hardware that has a lock on the military repairing it themselves should not be allowed to approved military hardware, This is a ridiculous situation.
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I think you are talking about the modern US military culture. There was a time when repairing the ovens would have been part of what a ship's captain made sure crew were trained for as part of readiness.
I don't know about what you're talking about but when the crew of a ship is legally prevented from fixing the ovens because of terms and conditions approved when the hardware was adopted the problem isnt with the captain, it's with the people approving the hardware to begin with.
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Not in this case. Maybe what you're saying applies to the military in general but I've already spelled out to you why this case has nothing to do with most officers and everything to do with the people approving the new hardware and negotiating the conditions.
I deal with this all the time with our ships (Score:3)
Re: I deal with this all the time with our ships (Score:2)
Enterprise attempts to fire phasers: (Score:2)
"We're sorry, your subscription to your phaser service has expired.".
Do you remember when you got (Score:2)
a schematic with every radio or television you bought? Manufacturers used to print the schematics as a sticker inside the cabinet or in the back pages of the user manual. That was a different epoch than today. Back then, it was possible to diagnose and repair your electronics if you had the proper knowledge and tools.
Now due to surface mount parts, you would need more specialized tools to repair modern electronics and you might have trouble locating parts custom designed for that radio or TV.
We throw a lot
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I think the overall shift has been towards making things smaller and cheaper, which includes putting as much as possible onto a small and not-feasibly-repairable PCB - not to intentionally make products harder/more expensive to repair. Though that is one of the results.
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Now due to surface mount parts, you would need more specialized tools to repair modern electronics
Fine, I can't replace a chip or capacitor. So where can I order an entire motherboard for my TV after a power surge takes out the HDMI port? Still have to buy a new TV for a lot more money.
That's hypothetical (for me), but my last TV I threw out because the LEDs had the "purple lights" issue [scientificamerican.com]. I actually did find the right LED light strips. But the disassembly process would have been a nightmare of layers. I would have wished the LEDs were held in with adhesive instead of whatever clips that would most c
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Amazon? [amazon.com]
Aliexpress? [aliexpress.com]
Replace the caps first though. The likely culprits are the same as they've always been, through-hole electrolytic capacitors. You could also replace surface mount capacitors (way easier than the THT ones) but they almost never fail so unless you see a smoking crater it's not worth it.
Repair requires some skill and some work. Most p
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Far back in the mists of ancient time, I used a PDP11/05 at work. This machine came with a full set of manuals including a schematics and commented listing of the microcode. It also had a comprehensive write-up of the principles of operation. There was enough information there to replicate the entire computer apart, perhaps, from the metalwork.
In terms of understanding how a computer worked, reading that set of manuals was probably more valuable than many college courses.
These days you get almost nothing. I
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URL and QR code that takes you somewhere remotely relevant? I wish. Shit sold "Solar Ready", with QR codes that take you to the manufacturers site to try and sell you their Solar Garbage, but you only get the wiring and install instruction if you buy THEIR overpriced garbage. Otherwise fuck you, plebian, figure it out yourself. Just give me a fucking PDF of the wiring you pre-dropped for fucks sake, I ALREADY gave you money, and you already spent the fucking time and wires...
The "owners manual" of a brand n
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Like? A soldering iron is a specialized tool. You can use it to repair either through-hole or surface mount electronics. Or you can buy a hot air rework tool for $20, which is cheaper than any soldering iron worthy of the name, and more easily repair either.
It's a hell of a lot easier to replace a surface mount anything than it is to do the same for the equivalent number of pins in a through hole component, wit
Two steps (Score:2)
1) absolutely demand right to repair - the idea that units which may be in FUCKING COMBAT need to call a service tech is unbelievably stupid.
2) find out who approved this contract AND FIRE THEM.
The contract needs to go away, and anyone in the DoD who agreed to this is literally not doing their job in a way that could ostensibly cost lives. This level of incompetence not only can't be tolerated, there have to be actual consequences.
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Not just R2R (Score:2)
In the modern world, Right to Repair doesn't mean a whole lot without access to the parts necessary to do so.
Access to the parts doesn't mean a whole lot without access to the diagnostic, calibration, and other hardware/software tools necessary to make the unit work after installing the parts.
There is no way in hell that the US Government, and especially the DOD, should be buying any bespoke equipment WITHOUT getting a full delivery of the software and hardware necessary to repair the equipment. That doesn
Follow the money ..... (Score:1)
Why Use Crap? (Score:1)
Why did things change? (Score:2)
Back in the day, electronics as an example came with schematics, with the assumption that the user may want to service or have his items serviced. Spare parts for prior purchased items were also typically available for a number of years (for those manufacturers still in business of of course). So what changed? A couple of things come to mind:
- more manufacturing has been moved to low cost, offshore entities
- products have become cheaper while onshore labor has become more expensive -- making
Naval organization is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a defense contractor that supplies equipment and systems to various navies across the world. In our case, weâ(TM)re happy to train the Navy in maintaining their own systems.
The problem is that with the way that most navies operate, itâ(TM)s very difficult to build up their expertise and competency in doing the actual repair work. Sailors typically post to a ship for a year, or two at most, and are responsible forfor dozens of systems. If your system is generally pretty reliable, that means youâ(TM)re going to drop to the bottom of their brains, and when it does eventually break theyâ(TM)re going to be in trouble.
The only Navy Iâ(TM)ve seen where this is less of an issue is one European Navy. Every ship has both a Chief Warrant Officer and an apprentice who is with that ship for their entire career. They are the senior technical expert on that ship, and are very well compensated. Most of them will spend 20+ years on a given ship, and will know every system intimately.
Re: Naval organization is the problem (Score:2)
"Most of them will spend 20+ years on a given ship, and will know every system intimately."
Interesting. The stories that some of these Warrant Officers could tell!
One of the reasons that officers are rotated in a modern military is so that no centers of power grow to where the troops are more loyal to a commander than to their government. Limiting the rank to WO's sort of gets around this problem. Supervisory authority, perhaps, but no command authority.
I wonder how large of a navy this could scale to?
No funny here (Score:2)
There was so much potential in the idea of the Navy invading the contractor to get the ovens fixed.
This customer support speaking. (Score:2)
- Can I please have your address so that we can send a technician your way?
- Sure. We're just a bit off the coast of Africa. One sec... Let me find the GPS coordinates for you...
hi tech ovens (Score:2)
Right to Repair Government (Score:2)
Is there a 'Right to Repair" the Government also, or is that not permitted?
The fundamental problem is with ownership (Score:2)
At some point people decided that it was reasonable to not actually buy things and instead purchase a limited license to use things and, like, hold them or whatever.
We need to take a step back, admit that it was a dumb direction, and if you hand over money for any physical thing, then that physical thing is yours to do with as you wish. Anything other than that is merely a rent-seeking scheme to get paid again and again for the same thing.
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I agree this is a bad look, but throwing out all subscription/service contracts is not the way.
What does that have to do with this? That is not being proposed or considered.
Re:Before we go bonkers (Score:5, Informative)
I agree this is a bad look, but throwing out all subscription/service contracts is not the way. Also, this is a terrible look for the contractor and the Navy. Some things need this type of treatment (complex missile and warhead maintenance would be 2 examples). However, connected ovens are not a tech the Navy needs. And ovens used to be considered part of the ship. This should have been killed at the review stages, but will be fixed now. I don't think this is the smoking gun for R2R. A bullet to support the cause, but this is going to be like the McDonald's icecream machines. Another blip.
I don't think you RTFS muchless RTFA. They weren't allowed to repair because the contract flat out states that only the company's techs can repair it:
(emphasis mine).
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What if the warhead is erroneously armed and liable to explode when there is no communication? IMO whoever is in charge should be able to give techs access to schematics and manuals for almost any weapon system.