The Department of Defense (DoD) has invested large quantities of money and personnel over many years to investigate software reuse with the intent of reducing it to a viable approach [#!DOD!#]. Software reuse has been envisioned as a method of controlling software expenses that take up such a large portion of current and future budgets. Programs such as STARS, RAPID and AdaNET have spent large amounts of resources directed towards necessary research and pilot implementations. The results have been important and useful but their objectives have not always been in harmony with the software needs of the Department of Defense.
The emphasis in DoD reuse efforts has been towards large Management Information Systems (MIS). This emphasis has left much of the software efforts in the DoD beyond the scope of reuse insertion. This represents a significant neglect since there is a significant amount of software in the DoD that can not meet the parameters required by large reuse efforts.