DOD software spending to top $20 billion

An independent review of U.S. Defense Department software programs projects that Pentagon spending for software will be more than $20 billion each year by 2002. Auditors at Federal Sources Inc. of McLean, Va., looked at software spending for weapons, information systems, and command, control, communications, computers and intelligence systems. Software represents one of the most difficult expenditures to track, and DOD officials have not found a way either to track or estimate software spending accurately. This lack of viable accounting is a growing concern, particularly because experts say Pentagon spending for software may already be larger than spending for hardware. - J.K.