National Journal military spending debate

Here is a link to a fascinating set of suggestions from a series of military spending experts, trying to set out what Secretary Gates should do under the new Obama Administration.
The National Journal's Corine Hegland summarizes the suggestions in a series of 7 points at the beginning, then the analysts make their cases after that.
I had a particular bias towards part (b), "eliminate non-useful weapons systems," which on the non-political level seems like a no-brainer in a time of restricted revenues.
Here is Ms. Hegland's summary: "b) Eliminate non-useful weapons systems including the amphibious warfare vehicle, the Army's Future Combat Systems; the F-22, F-35, C-13OJ, Stryker, DDG-1000 destroyer, and the V-22. (nominations by Joseph Collins, Larry Korb, Rachel Kleinfield, Andy Krepinevich, and Winslow Wheeler; Wheeler describes the systems as 'low-hanging fruit with their hyper-cost, almost complete irrelevance to warfare as we know it today, and high probability they are technical failures.') 'Gates now has both the opportunity and challenge to align the defense program with his vision,' writes Krepinevich, noting that the services are struggling to accept 'persistent irregular conflict.'”
Two straightforward statements jumped out at me, since part of my goal is to free up large amounts of money for social needs for the American people.
Rachel Kleinfeld, the Executive Director of the Truman National Security Project, was blunt: "The F-35 program is exhibit A for cuts--as 'the most costly single aircraft program in DoD history' in the words of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, it offers little that is essential for the wars we are likely to fight in the future."
In his usual refreshing style, Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information agrees with Kleinfeld that "...the Air Force's newest fighter, the F-35, can be regarded as only a technical fiasco – even more so than the preposterously over-priced and -hyped F-22. Nor is the $120 million per copy F-35 'affordable.'”
The entire set of posts can be found here:
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/will-obama-unleash-gates.php#1219590