“They probably get an ‘A’ from the standpoint of their success on their major initiatives,” said Fred Downey, a former Senate aide who is now vice president for national security at the Aerospace Industries Association. “They probably got all of them but one or maybe two, and that’s an extraordinarily high score.”

Image President Obama signed the national defense authorization act for fiscal 2010 on Wednesday. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

Still, Mr. Obama said at Wednesday’s signing ceremony, there is “more waste we need to cut.”

The act authorizes $550 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget in fiscal 2010 and $130 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That compares to a total of $654 billion for both accounts in fiscal 2009.

The measure also includes a ban on hate crimes that Democratic leaders attached to the bill.

Mr. Obama has said that he does not intend to reduce military spending while the nation is engaged in two wars. But Mr. Gates also wants to cut more futuristic programs to free money for simpler systems like helicopters and unmanned spy planes that can help the troops now.

Winslow T. Wheeler, a military analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington analytical organization, said another key to Mr. Gates’s success was regaining control of the budget from the armed services.

But the administration has had to make some compromises, and some issues remain to be decided in a separate spending bill.

Mr. Obama had wanted to cancel an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a new plane that is expected to be a mainstay for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines. He had also threatened to veto the military bills if they took money from plane purchases to keep developing that engine.

But Congressional leaders say they believe that the second engine will provide crucial insurance for the $300 billion fighter program. And they say they will take money from other parts of the military budget to save it.