A man in military uniform uses a laptop. Per a new executive order, the Pentagon has instituted stricter requirements on software purchases, making vendors account for supply chains through “indentured bills of materials” (iBOMs). (Shutterstock/chainarong06)

Enter the iBOM: What the New Defense Supply Chain Order Means for Software

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President Donald Trump’s executive order on July 20 is mostly about metals and magnets. But America’s defense contractors will also need to up their game on software transparency. 

On July 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on securing America’s defense supply chains. Most of the coverage focused on physical materials: rare-earth magnets, tungsten, tantalum, molybdenum, and soon gallium and germanium, all metals concentrated in defense electronics, magnets, and munitions where adversary sourcing has quietly persisted for years.

However, the order also includes software as part of that “critical supply chain.” These software components must be organized and transmitted to the Department of Defense in an “indentured bill of materials,” or iBOM.

What Is an “Indentured Bill of Materials”? 

“Indentured” is a common term in the defense community meaning “nested.” An indentured list breaks a finished product into a hierarchy reflecting its assemblies, each assembly into its sub-assemblies, and so on.

For the iBOM, this means that each........

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