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And Bryan Clark, a naval team analyst at the defense policy think tank CSBA, told TWS via email that "It is reasonable to assume he was referring to the submarines already reported to be operating in the area: USS Michigan and USS Cheyenne." Clark added that the revelation was "not particularly troubling" because so little was actually conveyed in Trump's comments: "It would not be unusual for two submarines to be operating in the East China Sea at any given time, and POTUS was not specific enough to help another country gain intelligence by trying to find or track the submarines," he said.

He avoided anything truly embarrassing or catastrophic (although I’m sure the Israelis chuckled when Trump arrived in Israel and announced that he had just gotten back from the Middle East). And when you add in all of the strain that the White House was under in the weeks prior to this trip, Trump’s advisers can pat themselves on the back for having pulled off a trip without major incident. We should be clear, though -- one reason the trip came off fairly well is that Trump started by visiting two countries, Israel and Saudi Arabia, that were eager and even desperate to please him. And although Trump’s rather harsh tone and cringe-worthy personal interactions at the NATO summit may not qualify as gaffes -- they simply reflected his true self -- they do mean that Trump undoubtedly missed an opportunity to really establish himself as the leader of the Atlantic alliance.

“If there was something wrong with the program then I would hazard a guess that the cuts would be much, much more significant than $20 million,” said Mark Gunzinger, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. A $20 million reduction is “really not that significant” in the context of a $55 billion-plus acquisition project, he added. “It would be erroneous to conclude that this is any kind of a signal of concern or displeasure” on the part of lawmakers, he said. “It’s certainly not going to cause any kind of a slippage to the program.”

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, attributed the problem to a disconnect between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and OMB. "The Navy knew there were industrial base concerns with only buying one LCS in FY-18, but was told by OSD not to address modernization in this budget and to focus on readiness," Clark, a former Navy official, told Inside Defense in an email. "Therefore, the Navy stayed with the shipbuilding plan that was published in the FY-17 budget, which had one LCS in FY-18." But the decision created problems for the Trump administration, which does not want shipyards laying off workers during a promised naval buildup, Clark wrote. "OMB therefore told OSD and the Navy to tell Congress that DOD would reevaluate the LCS number for FY-18 to ensure the LCS shipyards remain viable for the planned FY-20 frigate competition," he wrote. "This was something the Navy intended to do anyway, and OSD and OMB should have simply addressed it upfront in the budget documents and briefs."

"These airfield upgrades are sensible and necessary investments for our reassurance and deterrence efforts in Europe," says Kate Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The improvements "will have a real impact on the ability of U.S. and allied forces to operate at these bases, especially in contingency operations."

“It seems clear that despite the President’s call in his Philadelphia speech in September for a repeal of the Budget Control Act [which created the sequester] and a big buildup of the military he has not budgeted the resources to accomplish this,” says former ambassador Eric Edelman, a member of the National Defense Panel that recommended in 2014 a substantial buildup. “With these numbers he won’t be able to get a 350-ship Navy, a larger Army, or most of the other things that he promised the American people. There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric of ‘peace through strength’ and doing what is necessary from a budgetary perspective to build that strength.” He added, “Those of us who have been concerned about the declining state of the nation’s defenses will have to rely on the Congress to make sure that the gap between America’s commitments and its capabilities doesn’t grow greater on this President’s watch.”