DoD CIO: Defense Spending To Level OffDoD CIO: Defense Spending To Level Off

Budgetary pressures will test the Department of Defense's ability to hike spending on IT the way it has in the past few years. In particular, increases in the cost of retirement and health-care benefits, combined with costs associated with Iraq, will cause DoD spending to stabilize in 2006, said DoD CIO Linton Wells at an executive breakfast Thursday morning. Regarding the trend of annual increases in budget, "We've reached the tunnel at the end of the light," he said. "It's the end of the fat years," thanks in part to the $27 billion that will be spent on increases in health care alone.

That's not to say all hope for landing lucrative defense contracts is lost. According to Input, the Chantilly, Va.-based research firm that hosted the event, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) will contribute to growth in a number of market segments during the next five years -- including outsourcing (11 percent), computer systems (6 percent), security (5 percent) and communications and software (7 percent each).

Growth will come, in part, from a "network-centric" initiative that focuses on data sharing and enhanced "communication on the move," Wells said. Incorporated into this initiative is the DoD's Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program, which will provide a family of software programmable radios for reliable multichannel voice, data, imagery and video communications.

"A big problem during Operation Iraqi Freedom was the tendency for army units to outrun intelligence," he said. Such technology, as metadata tagging and radio-frequency-spectrum management, can improve communication by delivering "power to the edge."

But the department will need help from the private sector to realize the potential of a network that relies heavily on enhanced wireless and broadband capabilities.

"We can't just inject the technology and expect to be successful," Wells said. Instead, commercial partners will assist in planning initiatives and help to steamroll the opportunities presented by technology with issues relating to availability, security and proprietary standards.

"Rather than buy proprietary technology, I'd like to say, 'I want two high-band cards and two low-band cards with the following capabilities, and I want to mix and match from competing providers in the commercial sector,'" Wells said. "We need to take better advantage of the technology that's available."