ARTICLE: Draft Defense Department budget avoids weapons cuts, adds aircraft, By Greg Jaffe and Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, January 30, 2010

The opening:

The Obama administration's 2011 defense budget avoids the controversial weapons cuts of last year, according to a draft copy, and continues to shift modest amounts of money to weapons programs such as helicopters, unmanned planes and Special Operations units that are in heavy use Afghanistan and Iraq.

The more than $700 billion budget will be released Monday with a congressionally mandated review of defense spending. That review calls on the Pentagon to focus more attention on wars in which enemy forces hide among the populace and use roadside bombs and hit-and-run ambushes to attack U.S. troops. The Quadrennial Defense review also predicts a future dominated by "hybrid" wars, in which traditional states will fight more like guerrillas and insurgents will arm themselves with increasingly sophisticated technology, such as antitank weapons and missiles.

The bold pronouncements in the review, however, won't drive big changes in the Pentagon budget, which is dominated by massive weapons programs with powerful constituencies in Congress and the defense industry.

So hardly a death match between small wars and large, but a continuing modest shift of funds to SysAdmin-heavy programs.

The Leviathan is doing just fine, thank you very much, with cumulative operations favoring the SysAdmin slightly with each passing year.

The key thing is that the spigot is finally turned on, not how fast the water flows.