No one knows how to innovate better than the actual users of end-items and the Congress has manged to throw another bone to a bloated and ineffective bureaucracy by destroying right to repair for the services.

US lawmakers have removed provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 that would have ensured military members’ right to repair their own equipment.

The final language of the NDAA was shared by the House Armed Services Committee on Sunday, after weeks of delays pushed the annual funding bill to the end of the year. Among a host of other language changes made as part of reconciling different versions of the legislation drafted by the Senate and the House of Representatives, two provisions focused on the right to repair—Section 836 of the Senate bill and Section 863 of the House bill—have both been removed. Also gone is Section 1832 of the House version of the bill, which repair advocates worried could have implemented a “data-as-a-service” relationship with defense contractors that would have forced the military to pay for subscription repair services.

This adds yet another layer to the gargantuan defense budget and potential savings yielded  by letting the servcies repair their own equipment which usually leads to improvements on the way things are made and used in the fight.

The move is a blow to the broader right-to-repair movement, which advocates for policies that make it easier for device users, owners, or third parties to work on and repair devices without needing to get—or pay for—manufacturer approval. But while ensuring repair rights for service members did not make the final cut, neither did the competing effort to make the military dependent on repair-as-a-service subscription plans.

“For decades, the Pentagon has relied on a broken acquisition system that is routinely defended by career bureaucrats and corporate interests,” wrote senators Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, and Tim Sheehy, a Republican of Montana, in a joint statement shared with WIRED. Both support right-to-repair efforts and were behind the language in the Senate version of the NDAA. “Military right to repair reforms are supported by the Trump White House, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and our brave service members. The only ones against this common-sense reform are those taking advantage of a broken status quo at the expense of our warfighters and taxpayers,” they say.

The train of innovation has been derailed again.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-military-almost-got-the-right-to-repair-lawmakers-just-took-it-away/

Vanguard class nuclear submarine

But with all the scientists and engineers imported from Africa into the UK, how is this even possible?

On a more serious note, it is high time for America to suspend its maintenance program of the Trident systems the UK uses.

Yet another Islamic nuclear armed nation is not in the interests of the US.

The replacements should have been coming into service in 2024, not 2032 like they are.

The issues are mainly about the Royal Navy’s ship and submarine R+D design center at Bristol being closed in the early ’90s. Which meant that ship manufacturers who had previously been given a 95% complete ship/submarine design. Had to design the whole ship)submarine from scratch. Whereas previously they’d just chosen which ovens, microwaves, washing machines binks etc. to install.

There weren’t enough orders in the ’90s for SSN subs to follow on from the Vanguard class. This led to a multi year gap in production. With all of the workers being laid off. The better ones got new jobs away from Barrow-In-Furness and the rest had skills that decayed.

The submarine overhaul and scrapping base at Devonport. Was neglected for years. With the Health and Safety Executive prohibiting it from carrying out scrapping duties in about 2000 and it wasn’t in the mid 2010s expected to be able to resume scrapping until 2020+.

The replacements should have been coming into service in 2024, not 2032 like they are.

This has been a consistent problem in the UK for years.

“Dreadnought is late, Astute class submarine delivery is getting later, there is a massive backlog in Astute class maintenance and refitting, which continues to get worse, and SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale.

“Performance across all aspects of the programme continues to get worse in every dimension. This is an unprecedented situation in the nuclear submarine age.

“It is a catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning.”

mmm

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2143258/britain-incapable-maintaining-nuclear-submarine

A kitchen joke about tomato sauce quickly gives way to the hard edge of politics as we unpack a growing fracture on the right. Trump’s volleys at Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie aren’t just personality drama; they point to a deeper shift toward a larger security‑state posture and a party that now tolerates the same speech controls it once condemned. We break down NSM‑7 and what “disrupt” really signals when it’s assigned to the FBI, CIA, DHS, and even the IRS: pre‑crime logic entering mainstream governance.

The tension doesn’t end there. Israel’s war in Gaza has become a litmus test that cuts through spin and divides the base from party elites; younger voters see the footage daily and reject euphemisms. Add the Epstein files, where demands for transparency meet political deflection, and the cracks widen. We connect those fights to kitchen‑table realities: stubborn inflation, housing out of reach, and childcare costs that devour paychecks. When material conditions tighten, slogans fade, and trust shifts to whoever delivers clarity and results.

Then we turn south to Venezuela. Craig “Pasta” Jardula, drawing on on‑the‑ground election observation across Latin America, challenges the default narrative that Maduro’s win is purely fraudulent. He notes the valid concern over ballot access while explaining why opposition “evidence” wouldn’t pass a courtroom test and why regional systems are often more transparent than U.S. critics admit. We also dismantle the “narco‑state” talking point and refocus on the true origin of America’s fentanyl disaster: a pharma‑driven addiction pipeline and policy failure at home.

War talk looms, but we explain why invading Venezuela would be a catastrophic misread—terrain, air defenses, trained militias, and a fiercely held sense of sovereignty. Sanctions already serve the aim of internal fracture; escalation only feeds the military‑industrial complex. The thread tying it all together is simple and urgent: foreign policy choices shape life at home. Roll back the security creep, protect open debate, stop laundering domestic pain through distant wars, and invest in outcomes people can feel.

If this conversation challenged your assumptions or sharpened your view, follow and subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review with the one moment that hit hardest. Your feedback helps us push for smarter, freer policy debates.

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The Ukraine and Russian forces have been building drones for less than three thousand dollars and the “Affordable Mass”  efforts in the US had an original floor price of three hundred thousand dollars because that is the way the American “defense” acquisition system rolls.

Quantity does have a quality all of its own but the US is way behind the power curve.

The future is drones in peer combat in the 21st century.

The future is missiles in peer combat in the 21st century.

The future is salvo competition in peer combat in the 21st century.

The future is a war of leakers in peer combat in the 21st century.

American arms are not ready.

War Department Asks Industry to Make More Than 300K Drones, Quickly, Cheaply

As I have mentioned, the US Navy can’t catch a break from the cavalcade of calamities that is Navy shipbuilding for two generations.

First they removed the 155mm gun when it was disclosed it was 800 thousand dollars a round Advanced Gun System (AGS) then it took five years (!) to launch its first missile from the Vertical Launch System (VLS) on deck. They were going to build 32 of these floating dumpsters but have only built three. Instead of blowing the $22.4 billion on researching and developing the Zumwalts, the money would have been better spent by not being spent.

The Zumwalts were designed as next-generation multi-mission destroyers that would lean on stealth to better survive against enemy ships and airplanes.

The Navy once wanted 32 of these destroyers, but the cost overruns were prohibitive, and only three were built. The ships are also maintenance-heavy and expensive to keep in the water.

The main gun was faulty. Some critics have wondered if the money sunk into the Zumwalt-class would have been better spent building more submarines.

The first of the class, the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000), was the largest and most costly destroyer ever built. General Dynamics spent $40 million just to make a special facility to produce the ships. That gives you an idea of the magnitude of the program and its expenses. The entire program ballooned to 50 percent greater cost than expected.

Again, no one has been held accountable for these very expensive and slow “gun trucks” (30 knots) that will now haul around five Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) (50 million dollars each) that will be picked up very early by the sophisticated early detection systems of the Chinese off their landmass. Stealth can’t hide from long wave radar.

$22,000,000,000 Wasted? The Navy Has a Plan to Save the Zumwalt-Class Stealth Destroyer