Instead of proposing sensible and necessary reductions, they would throw more money at a Pentagon that has had a blank check for more than a decade. The base budget for 2013 — not including war-related costs — is projected at $525 billion, up roughly 34 percent from 2001. By 2022, Mr. Romney’s plan would increase annual spending to $986 billion, according to an analysis by Travis Sharp of the Center for a New American Security.

The centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s proposal is a promise to spend at least 4 percent of gross domestic product on military personnel, procurement, operations and maintenance, and research and development. That would add as much as $2.3 trillion to the defense budget over 10 years from projected 2013 spending levels, according to Mr. Sharp’s analysis.

And yet for all these extra trillions, there’s no sense that this money would produce a more effective security strategy. Linking a budget to the G.D.P. is a bizarre way of addressing defense needs — which rationally should be based on a disciplined analysis of threats and the nation’s tolerance of risk. This certainly won’t provide any incentive for reform in a Pentagon that spends with more waste and less economic bang for the buck than other federal departments. Some conservatives have advocated the G.D.P. metric, saying it would ensure military strength by guaranteeing increased defense spending as the nation’s wealth rises. But others — like the anti-tax guru Grover Norquist — have urged Republicans to lead in reducing the military budget.

Mr. Romney is showing no restraint. Even though American forces are out of Iraq and withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, his campaign Web site states that he would reverse President Obama’s plan to cut the Army and Marine Corps by 100,000 troops. Doing that, according to Mr. Sharp, would cost at least $41 billion over five years. Just what mission the extra troops would perform is unspecified.