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Procurement and research and development are the chief areas in which Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sought savings in the proposals he announced in April. He has proposed cuts to programs including the F-22 fighter, the DDG-1000 destroyer, the Army's Future Combat System, the presidential helicopter fleet, the transformational communications satellite, aircraft carrier production runs, the airborne laser missile defense program and the next-generation bomber. These are solid proposals; he could make additional cuts to the V-22 Osprey and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programs, as well as existing nuclear weapons platforms.

It is important to note, though, that these aren't cuts in current costs; they are cuts in plans. When you eliminate a defense program, you still typically must buy something to replace aging equipment, even if the alternative is less expensive. Moreover, a lot of equipment (much of it purchased under Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush) is wearing out, and we need to replace it soon.

Setting out his priorities for military spending, Obama said late Tuesday in his first address to a joint session of Congress that he wanted to provide relief to men and women in uniform with higher pay and more boots on the ground.

"To relieve the strain on our forces, my budget increases the number of our soldiers and Marines," Obama said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already warned of major cutbacks, citing expensive weapons programs such as the F-22 fighter aircraft as possible targets.

"It's obviously one of the programs that, along with a number of others -- many others -- that we will be looking at," Gates said earlier this month.

Gates has made clear that counter-insurgency is the immediate priority, and that fleets of new ships, squadrons of sophisticated aircraft and a network of hi-tech army vehicles may be of little use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Apart from the F-22 Raptor fighters, which cost about 350 million dollars each, other candidates for possible cuts are F-35 and F-18E/F aircraft, the Navy's new generation destroyer -- the DDG-1000, a new amphibious ship, and computer-linked Army vehicles, known as Future Combat Systems.