To Reifer, Ada is more than a programming language. It's a technology to deliver software engineering to the systems. It's the right tool for a whole variety of jobs. My goal is to make Ada the tool chest of choice, not the tool chest of mandate. The basic reason for the problems that surround Ada is popularity.
Old habits are hard to break.
When anything comes down as an edict, people often rebel. The key issue that surrounds Ada from a command point of view and the reason DISA is adamant about the Ada mandate is the core competency issue. DoD can't afford the time or the money to teach programmers a new language every time they change projects. In the late 1960s, DoD was using nearly 450 programming languages. That number has been reduced to approximately 37, which is still too many.