Defense Secretary Robert Gates has unveiled President Obama’s first military budget, a document that is both ambitious and restrained. It does not slash many of the Pentagon’s famously expensive armament programs very deeply, and the cuts leave most important defense priorities intact. But it proposes changes in procurement that could save dollars and promote military efficiency if enacted by Congress.

That’s a big if. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who tried to reform procurement as defense secretary under the first President Bush, could bend Mr. Obama’s ear about that.

Since President Eisenhower, all presidents, so far as we can recall, have voiced the intention of reforming Pentagon procurement. But big defense contracts are treated by members of Congress as jobs programs — the not necessarily apocryphal jet fighter with parts produced by contractors in dozens of congressional districts! — not to mention campaign-fundraising opportunities.

Several cuts in the proposed budget seem to single out weapons systems with histories of cost overruns, delays and other difficulties. This is good. Examples are the F-22 fighter and the C-17 cargo plane. (What is it about cargo planes that is such jail bait for procurement bunko artists?)

Axing a fancy new presidential helicopter program (actually, 26 of them!) sends a healthy symbolic message. Sacrifice begins at the top.

Naval procurement has major implications for our region, so we are guardedly pleased that the slowdown proposed for the deepwater Navy would be very slow indeed. The proposed reduction of aircraft-carrier battle groups from 11 to 10 would not take place until 2040. Growth in a new class of stealth destroyers would be halted but only after the next three are built; 10 had been on order at both General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. The three will be built in Bath, Maine. Meanwhile, the fleet of smaller, speedier naval craft would be beefed up.

The Pentagon budget calls for fewer Army brigades but no cut in troop numbers. And it seeks 2,800 more commandoes.

That shift in priorities shows up, perhaps somewhat dubiously, in funding for strategic missile defense. More will be spent with the aim of being able to shoot down single missiles fired by such rogue powers as Iran or North Korea. But airborne laser defenses against major missile attacks from large powers (such as Russia or China) would be cut. That could be risky — more risky than is wise given the relatively small pots of money involved.

In general, the proposed budget slows growth in big weapons systems designed to fight major wars with other big powers but increases spending on such systems as the Predator drone and other weapons to fight more irregular types of conflict (and to keep supplying forces in Iraq and Afghanistan). In an era of (mostly) straitened budgets, that sort of tough choice is both necessary and inevitable.

Mr. Obama is wary, we hope, of creating the sort of hollowed-out military and reduced force projection that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The Soviet Union took advantage of America’s perceived weakness in the 1970s. Intelligently designed cuts — and efficient procurement — could strengthen the military and perhaps avoid a new round of U.S. strategic fecklessness.

Though diplomacy is the chief tool of President Obama’s foreign policy, he appears to understand that soft power can be effective only if America can project enough hard power to stiffen the credibility of our diplomats. Let us hope that Congress understands that, too.