Gates said ending or scaling back some major weapons programs over the past year had saved billions of dollars, but it represented only a first step towards getting the vast defense budget under control.

"More is needed -- much more," Gates said in a speech at the Eisenhower presidential library in Abilene, Kansas.

"Given America's difficult economic circumstances and parlous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny," he said.

Mushrooming administrative costs and a defense bureaucracy overloaded with senior officers and civilian managers threatened to drain away vital funds needed to sustain the military, he said.

Spending on operational and maintenance costs had nearly doubled over the past decade, excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and funds for contract services had grown by some 23 billion during the same period, he said.

Overhead costs meanwhile accounted for about 40 percent of the Defense Department's budget.

Even as the US military scaled back its forces in the 1990s, the Pentagon continued to add layers of management, he said.

The trends were unsustainable and the approach was outdated, he said.

"The private sector has flattened and streamlined the middle and upper echelons of its organization charts, yet the Defense Department continues to maintain a top-heavy hierarchy that more reflects 20th century headquarters superstructure than 21st century realities," he said.

As an example, Gates said that a request for a dog handling team in Afghanistan had to be approved by five different headquarters led by four-star officers.

As the department prepared the next defense budget for fiscal year 2012, Gates said he was ordering all branches of the military and the Pentagon's civilian managers "to take a hard, unsparing look at how they operate - in substance and style alike."

The goal would be to slash overhead costs to make room for money needed to modernize and maintain the current military force, he said.

He said no studies or legislation were required to reform defense spending, only the necessary "political will" to make "choices that will displease powerful people both inside the Pentagon and out."

Some members of Congress have infuriated Gates by pushing to expand weapons programs in spite of his advice, and with warnings about purported shortages in fighter jets and naval ships.

In remarks clearly pointed at Congress, Gates said: "Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the US battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners?"

Gates cited former president Dwight Eisenhower as an inspiring model for reining in defense spending, saying the World War II commander saw national security as inextricably linked to economic prosperity.

"Eisenhower strongly believed that the United States -- indeed, any nation -- could only be as militarily strong as it was economically dynamic and fiscally sound."

Despite alarm over the US government's ballooning deficit, the military budget has been spared so far from belt-tightening efforts.

The 2011 defense budget comes to more than 700 billion dollars, a roughly two percent increase.

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