Trump promises 'billions' more for missile defense

President Trump is pledging to announce a plan within the next week to increase U.S. missile defense spending by "a substantial number of billions" in response to threats from North Korea.

"We're going to be increasing our budget by many billions of dollars because of North Korea and other reasons," he said, according to an Aug. 10 White House pool report.

"We'll probably be able to report that over the next week, because as you know, we reduced it by 5 percent but I've decided I don't want that," he said, referring to the administration's fiscal year 2018 defense budget request.

"We're going to be increasing the anti-missile by a substantial number of billions," he said.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee proposed adding $772 million to the Missile Defense Agency's FY-18 spending request, directing $558 million of the proposed increase -- more than 70 percent -- to Israeli programs. The remainder would go to a host of other missile defense programs.