How important the changes recommended by Gates ultimately will be depends on whether Congress accepts his proposal. Gates' recommendations will next go to the White House Office of Management and Budget and then be presented to Capitol Hill.

In a series of speeches since he took office in late 2006, Gates has criticized Pentagon spending, saying that the Defense Department suffers from "next-war-itis," spending too much time worrying about unlikely threats.

Gates said 50% of the money in the budget should go to programs meant to counter conventional threats, about 10% to programs useful only in irregular war and 40% to programs that are useful to both.

"I am just trying to get the irregular warfare guys a seat at the table," Gates said.

The overall size of the budget, $534 billion, was announced earlier, but Gates had not outlined what weapons programs he intended to cut. The budget marks the end of a long run-up in defense spending that began in 2001.

Eliminating programs has proved difficult for previous Defense secretaries -- Dick Cheney famously tried to kill the Marine Corps tilt-rotor V-22 only to see the aircraft resurrected.

And Gates likely will face his own challenges getting his budget through Congress, as members jockey to save home-state programs.


from: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pentagon-budget7-2009apr07,0,2506598.story

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IMO
The big story is yet to come. Every senator and most House members have some manufacturing in their districts tied to the Pentagon. These bureaucratically entrenched programs have resisted and defied every SecDef and president at least since Eisenhower's famous "military-industrial complex" speech. Every senator and congressman gives lip service to Pentagon reform but each one, every time, wants the cuts to come at the expense of somebody else's state, somebody else's district. I wish Gates the best of luck but Pentagon inertia and congress are against him.