However, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow who focuses on naval issues at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said the funding doesn’t do enough to help with modernization. It will “basically allow the Marines to operate at the readiness they have been over the last few years,” he told National Defense. “It addresses some of the readiness shortfalls … but what is doesn’t do is really help them with their modernization problems.”

President Trump is headed to Saudi Arabia, the first stop on his first foreign trip as president. The Saudis buy a lot of weapons from the U.S., and more arms deals could be announced this weekend. The U.S. keeps careful tabs on who buys American-made weapons and what they buy. There is sometimes a delicate balance between arms deals and diplomacy.

At the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, senior fellow Bryan Clark said Congress has recently shown a willingness to add Navy ships to the budget and he thinks they'll continue to do so to get to a larger fleet. Congress can't necessarily commit to a future vision because the budget is done year to year, not decades out, he added. Clark, who worked for the previous chief of naval operations, said the most innovative part of the paper is the proposed interconnectivity of the future fleet, so ships over hundreds of miles can work together to achieve a mission and a single ship doesn't have to be capable of doing every mission on its own. It's a different way of thinking about a Navy, he said.

The stories are familiar to Bryan Clark, a former submarine officer who led strategic planning for the Navy as special assistant to the chief of naval operations until 2013. He is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The small to midsized suppliers to larger shipyards don't rely on automated processes or hundreds of workers. In some cases, specialized items "are made in an artisan sort of way," he said.

According to a report from Scout Warrior's Michael Fabey, the CSBA report recommends a high/low mix of traditional carriers along with new, more agile smaller carriers.

“They are looking for something in the $700 million to $1 billion range,” said Bryan Clark, a retired but well-connected Navy strategist the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, which itself recommended a larger frigate in a recent congressionally-chartered study. That’s as compared to $550 million for the latest Littoral Combat Ships, whose price has come down dramatically since early overruns, and about $1.8 billion for an 8,200-9,700 ton Aegis destroyer. “If it could be half the price of a destroyer, that’s probably the ideal.”