Change is coming to the Pentagon. The prevailing wisdom is that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates brings it. Real change is, indeed, in the wind, but it is not coming from Gates. The long overdue program terminations and overhead savings Gates pursues are surely welcome, but they are not bringing the re-birth the Pentagon desperately needs. Luckily, others seek to do what is needed. Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., has put together an alternative budget plan to reduce spending there by $1 Trillion over 10 years.

The Coast Guard needs money. At a time when the service is due to whack 1,100 uniform positions and drop some missions, it must manage the government response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, pursue drug traffickers, rescue fishermen and sailors, guard our nation’s coasts and enforce all those fishing and environmental regulations. Defense consultant Robbin Laird argues that one very apt place to pull funding for the Coast Guard’s environmental and emergency responses is the Minerals Management Service, which generates about $13 billion each year working with oil companies to develop oil and natural gas fields. Stop pointing fingers, Laird says, and do something.

We need to cut weapons spending, trim the bloated ranks of the military bureaucracy and reign in runaway pay and benefits Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the nation Saturday in his speech from the steps of the Eisenhower Library in Kansas. And that speech came a few days after Gates warned the Navy to rethink its course on carriers, on new nuclear submarnes and he placed crosshairs on the Marines’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. So we asked Mackenzie Eaglen of the Heritage Foundation what Congress needs to do and whether Gates is on the right path or is veering off course. Read on to find her answers.

The Obama administration took the unique decision this week to release the exact number of American nuclear weapons as part of its effort o be transparent and to encourage other countries to do the same. That, combined with some other recent national security moves, has commentator Ed Timperlake, author and principal director for mobilization, planning and requirements in the Reagan administration, arguing that the administration’s “confusion, political posturing and muddled launch” do not serve the nation well. Read on.

The Gates’ Pentagon will make significant changes to its National Security Strategy, dropping: the Bush administration’s controversial concept of preemptive attack, also known as preventive force; the idea of a “war” on terror; and the identification of Islamists as the root of terror. The Obama administration is to issue its first NSS soon so we asked Abraham Sofaer at Sanford University’s Hoover Institution to offer a glimpse of what the differences are likely to be from the Bush administration and just how important they will be in guiding the administration’s actions. Sofaer concludes that the Gates’ Pentagon will make significant changes to the language used. Read on to find out if he thinks the Obama administration’s actions will change much.

UPDATED: Link To Gates Speech; He Calls For New Export Legislation

Higher walls around fewer things. That is the new approach on arms exports that Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn advocated last week before a gathering organized by the Aerospace Industries Association. Lynn knew his audience. AIA, pushed hard by the big primes who depend for much of their profits on foreign sales, has nagged and worried and cajoled every administration since I started covering defense in 1997 to get them to loosen the slow and negative grip that the State Department has had on arms export licenses. And Lynn’s boss, Robert Gates, is scheduled to deliver a Tuesday address on the topic to the Business Executives for National Security.

The Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review strikes bold new policy ground, scrapping MIRVs, formally eschewing first strike and creating a unique category of nuclear targets — rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. So we asked some of Washington’s top nuclear and defense experts if the White House made the right choices. It’s all part of our new, vibrant commentary section we call The Tank, which can be read at our parent website, Military​.com Here’s the question we asked: “Did the Obama administration strike the right balance between nonproliferation, the threat of nuclear weapons and the calculus of conventional versus nuclear power”?

When the Pentagon’s top buyer appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, most observers expected Ash Carter to tell lawmakers just how much each F-35 costs and how much the plane is likely to cost over time. That didn’t happen. Winslow Wheeler, a bipartisan conagreassional defense budget expert now at the Center for Defense Information, penned a detailed analysis and commentary picking apart the Pentagon’s numbers and their underlying assumptions. Winslow’s commentary follows.

Arms control elicits strong emotions and sparks great debates. In that tradition, Kingston Reif and Travis Sharp offer a rebuttal to the recent commentary we ran from the folks at the Heritage Foundation. Here’s the take of two dedicated arms control advocates. In their recent commentary on DoD Buzz (“Will START Talks Go MAD,”), the Heritage Foundation’s Baker Spring and Helle Dale recycle a snake oil sales pitch that first emerged at the dawn of the Atomic Age. The illusion is that the awesome destructiveness of nuclear weapons can somehow be neutralized by a panacea—in this case impenetrable missile defenses.

The Obama Pentagon proclaims it’s commitment to reformed acquisition and greater competition. Robbin Laird, international defense consultant who advised the Air Force on the last tanker competition, argues in this commentary that Northrop’s decision to pull out of the KC-X competition will pose a basic test of the administration’s commitment and it’s ability to oversee a major program.

Russia has tried to use these treaty talks to lock in its nuclear advantages and take away any potential American defenses, and our side seems ready to agree it will neither improve nor expand its existing system for countering long-range ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, true to Obama’s dream, the U.S. government doesn’t seem to think that having the ability to inflict widespread damage on Russia would be essential to an improved bilateral relationship.

Much will be made of a few reluctant acknowledgements of reality. The Navy won’t plan on, for now, a new cruiser it can’t afford even under the wildest budget growth assumptions. The Army will continue redesigning the vehicles for its “system of system” target hunting technologies that we now know can’t find even primitive enemies. The Air Force will have to wait, but just a bit, for a new bomber to try, yet again, to attack what it called decades ago “critical nodes.” The Marine Corps will declare a return to its amphibious warfare heritage: to fight its way onto hostile shores — something it has not done since 1945.