Mitt Romney formally accepted the Republican nomination for president during a speech last night that touched only briefly on military matters.
Defense-minded observers have been frustrated that the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign recently has shared only broad outlines on his potential policy on everything from the war in Afghanistan to the makeup of weapons programs he favors.
Romney took aim last night at President Barack Obama’s handling of Pentagon during his address at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
“His trillion-dollar cuts to our military will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, and also put our security at greater risk,” Romney said, spurring boos from the crowd.
Romney was referring to defense budget cuts tied to the Budget Control Act of 2011, which both parties in Congress passed and Obama signed into law. The act cuts planned defense spending by $487 billion over 10 years and also kicked off a process that could result in another $500 billion in so-called sequestration cuts to the defense budget over the next decade.
Leading up to last night’s speech, the defense community heard from Romney during an address to the American Legion in Indianapolis Wednesday, when he pledged to fight all of the $1 trillion in real and potential defense budget cuts brought about by the Budget Control Act. Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan also addressed the GOP convention Wednesday night, faulting Obama for his role in deficit-cutting negotiations (Defense Daily, Aug. 30).
The new platform that the Republican party approved at the convention in Tampa on Tuesday calls for robust military spending–on areas including aircraft, ships, missile defense, and cybersecurity–but does not set specific goals for the size of the Pentagon budget (Defense Daily, Aug. 28).
The platform, notably, does not call for setting defense spending at 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the coming years. Romney’s campaign previously said in an October 2011 whitepaper that he wanted to maintain a floor of 4 percent of GDP spending on “funds devoted to the fundamental military components of personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and development.” Yet, since then, his campaign has portrayed the 4 percent level as more of a rough goal.
“There isn’t anything actionable for defense investors in the Republican’s National Platform…Nor was there anything in the speech that Gov. Romney made at the American Legion annual convention on Aug. 29,” Byron Callan, director of Capital Alpha Partners LLC in Washington, said in a note to investors. “Both of these were data-free in terms of providing insights on how defense spending plans and priorities could change.”
None of the data points in Romney’s October whitepaper on military matters –including its call to boost the naval shipbuilding rate from nine to 15 ships per year–have been reiterated by the campaign recently, Callan noted.
Still, he noted, the new Republican platform talks about maintaining “military and technical superiority through innovation while upgrading legacy systems, including aircraft and armored vehicles” and speaks favorably about surveillance, special operations, drone aircraft, cybersecurity, nuclear, and missile-defense capabilities.
Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group, was quick to pick up on the missile-defense language in the platform.
“Though there are no specific plans or promises, this platform position would imply an increase in funding, capability, and focus on strengthening U.S. homeland missile defense as well as the re-shifting of current missile defense funding towards protecting the U.S. homeland,” Ellison said.
The Democratic party plans to nominate Obama as its presidential pick next week at its convention in Charlotte, N.C. Democrats are expected to delve into national-security matters, which will be addressed by speakers including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.).