BBC News with Joe Ma)cintosh.

The United States government is announcing big defence cuts aimed at saving billions of dollars. With the details, here is James Reynolds.

The US Department of Defence is expected to spend more than $ 700 billion this year - that's more than any other military service in the world. The man in charge of all this spending, the Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, has announced that he's found plenty of excess costs that can be trimmed. Mr Gates has decided to close Joint Forces Command. That's one of the military's ten major commands. The command trains troops from the different services to work together. It employs nearly 5,000 staff. Mr Gates has also announced that he's cutting by 10% the number of contractors employed by the military, and he will cap the number of generals, admirals and senior civilian officials in the armed forces.