Romney mistakenly adds two more Navy ships to his promised total

Updated 5:40 p.m. ET

(CBS News) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Mitt Romney on Thursday revised upward by two the number of Navy ships he would seek to build annually as president, although campaign aides said later that the former Massachusetts governor misspoke.

"America must have a military so strong no one would ever think of testing it," Romney said in a speech in Jacksonville. "So rather than cut back on the number of ships we buy per year, as the president would, or we build per year, I'd go from the nine we're planning on building to 17 a year."

As recently as two weeks ago, Romney had called for building 15 ships a year. Adding to the fleet would be welcomed in Florida and Virginia, both of which have a substantial Navy presence, but military analysts have warned that additions would be tough to pay for and require cuts elsewhere in the Pentagon budget.

Several hours later, however, campaign aides said Romney misspoke and that he intends to stick to the 15-ships number.

Romney also repeated his other campaign promises to bolster the military, including increasing the size of the Air Force's fleet and adding about 100,000 active-duty personnel.

[audemus]

Here's Romney's little plan in the nut-shell.

Help out the wealthy with his slash and burn techniques designed to "neutron bomb" the poor. Then he'll tuck in all his rich little buddies at night with visions dancing around in their little bitty heads of the mighty military machine I'll build them protecting their many and sundry, blood-stained assets. That's about it....what's not to love ?

Brilliant....

[Lindag10]

This is ridiculous. We need to CUT back on military spending, not INCREASE it. How does this man think that the country could pay for so many ships with tax cuts? The more he talks, the crazier he sounds.