This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 21st, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Meet the new defense secretary, same as the old defense secretary,

but his press is better so far this time around.

Is Robert Gates actually taking on the military industrial complex with his modest proposed

cuts in military budgets?

Ben Friedman, Cato Institute Research Fellow in Defense and Homeland Security

Studies, comments.

Secretary Gates had a press conference where he announced a bunch of cuts and additions

to procurement programs in the Pentagon.

This is just a suggestion.

It's not official U.S. policy yet.

It's what the Defense Department is asking Congress to do because of course it's ultimately

up to Congress what happens with the

defense budget and he announced you know the end of F-22 production which is the Air Force's next generation

fighter. He broke up the future combat systems program which is this army potpourri of programs really that they tied together that are meant to modernize the army.

He accelerated production of the Joint Strike Fighter, which is a fighter

aircraft that's going to be used by the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force. He

cancelled a rescue program, a helicopter program in the Air Force.

He canceled the presidential helicopter program and made a number of other changes in the

defense budget, notably also delaying the Air Force's

bomber program, its production of its next carrier and cruiser, and probably getting rid of the it's a new destroyer the DDG

...