The new administration has signaled it hopes to make savings through a planned withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and from cuts in expensive new weapon programs, although Obama's budget request did not indicate which weaponry might be scrapped.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the budget request would allow the government to take care of soldiers, bolster an emphasis on counter-insurgency warfare and carry out the planned expansion of the Army and Marine Corps.

"In our country's current economic circumstances, I believe that represents a strong commitment to our security," Gates told reporters.

But he warned his department would "reassess all weapon programs" as part of a careful review of the 2010 budget.

Obama's budget request for fiscal 2010 unveiled Thursday seeks 130 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, down from 141.4 billion for operations in the current fiscal year.

The administration offered a rough forecast that the cost of the wars would drop to about 50 billion dollars annually in the next several years.

The monthly cost of the war in Iraq has already declined from about 10 billion dollars to eight billion in recent months, officials said.

Gates said the proposed budget offered some flexibility but said there were "some hard choices" ahead on spending.

He acknowledged that pay and benefits for military personnel were taking up a growing share of the defense budget, especially healthcare, that might crowd out other spending projects.

The budget request includes 533.7 billion dollars for the main defense budget, a four percent increase over the main budget for fiscal 2009, excluding most of the costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some war costs were shifted to the main defense budget, including funding to increase the number of soldiers and marines, and programs for wounded soldiers, Gates said.

The president also requested an additional 75.5 billion dollars to cover war costs for the remainder of the current fiscal year, after Congress approved 65.9 billion for fiscal 2009 before Obama took office.

The vast US defense budget represents more than 40 percent of the world's total military spending and US spending will continue to grow under Obama's budget, albeit at a slower pace than under former president George W. Bush.

"The annual growth rate, however, appears to be lower than was typical during the Bush years," said Travis Sharp, military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Bush's annual defense budget requests called for increases of about four to five percent in military spending, according to Sharp.

Under Obama, the projected war costs were now being presented at the same time as the rest of the federal budget to show "greater transparency," officials said, instead of past practice when war budgets were presented piecemeal over time.

The war expenses would also be included when the government calculates the overall budget deficit, in a break with previous policy.

The president and his Democratic allies have criticized the previous administration's method of accounting for the wars through a series of "supplemental" funding requests outside of the main defense budget.

Gates meanwhile shed no light on which aircraft, ships, vehicles or other sophisticated weaponry might be dumped.

Candidates for possible cutbacks identified by the Pentagon include Navy destroyers built by General Dynamics, fighter jets such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing's F-22 Raptors and carrier-based Super Hornets, a digital radio system for all the armed services and a missile defense system for Central Europe.

Gates has already singled out the F-22 Raptor fighters, which cost about 350 million dollars each, for potential cutbacks.

More Navy aircraft carriers and a computer-linked network of Army vehicles, known as Future Combat Systems, could also be slashed.

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