The defence secretary said the military already faced challenging spending targets
Further big cuts in defence spending would lead to the loss of the UK's armed forces capability, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has warned.
Speaking ahead of the chancellor's upcoming spending review, he said the military was already "extremely taught" after the biggest departmental cuts since the end of the Cold War.
He told the BBC he would be "fighting the corner for my budget and defence".
Other Tory ministers see more savings from the welfare budget, he added.
Reductions in defence spending for 2013-15 in addition to those in 2010's Strategic Defence and Security Review were outlined in last year's Autumn statement.
But Downing Street said last month that the military would not be immune from further financial cuts in Chancellor George Osborne's spending review later this year.
A report this week from the Royal United Services Institute suggested this could lead to additional reductions in more than £1bn a year in the defence budget from 2015.
Analysis
It is rare for a senior minister to speak out so publicly about cuts that are still the subject of such tense negotiation.
But Philip Hammond is clearly trying to draw the battle lines ahead of the chancellor's Spending Review for post 2015.
George Osborne has to make savings of at least £10bn.
If that were to translate into cuts right across departments - save for those that have been "ring-fenced" - then the Ministry of Defence could lose more than another £1bn from its budget.
Mr Hammond says while there may be some scope for "modest efficiency savings" he's adamant that he won't be able to make significant cuts without eroding Britain's military capabilities - in other words making more troops redundant and axing more military equipment.
The defence secretary thinks the savings should come from other departments, namely the welfare budget.
That puts him on a collision course with the Conservative's coalition partners. Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, has already publicly stated that he has no plans to make further savings in welfare budget.
Speaking to the BBC as he oversaw a Royal Marines training exercise in Norway, Mr Hammond said: "There may be some modest reductions we can make through further efficiencies and we were look for those, but we won't be able to make significant further cuts without eroding military capability."
He added: "We are already extremely taught. We have some very challenging targets ahead of us to deliver the outcome of the last spending review and I'm clear that we won't be able to deliver big further savings."
Mr Hammond said: "My job as secretary of state is to fight the corner for defence.
"Of course, I understand the chancellor's challenge. He has to find additional savings in order to consolidate the public finances, as we have to do. But we need to look broadly across government at how we are going to do that, not just narrowly at a few departments."
BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale said tense negotiations over the next public spending round are already under way and Mr Hammond is publicly drawing the lines of battle.
But our correspondent said the suggestion that savings could come from the welfare budget is likely to put him at loggerheads with his Lib Dem coalition partners who believe that cuts to welfare have gone far enough.
In a Daily Telegraph interview, Mr Hammond said that other Conservative Cabinet ministers believed that the greatest burden of any cuts should fall on the welfare budget.
He said there was a "body of opinion within Cabinet who believes that we have to look at the welfare budget again... if we are going to get control of public spending on a sustainable basis".
He added that in the long-term "we should be seeing welfare spending falling" on the back of rising employment.
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