88 retired U.S. military leaders voice support for Trump

As many as 88 retired U.S. military generals and officials on Tuesday issued an open letter to bolster Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, praising his position on national security.

"For the past eight years, America's armed forces have been subjected to a series of ill-considered and debilitating budget cuts, policy choices and combat operations that have left the superb men and women in uniform less capable of performing their vital missions in the future than we require them to be," said the letter.

"For this reason, we support Donald Trump and his commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically," it announced.

"The 2016 election affords the American people an urgently needed opportunity to make a long-overdue course correction in our national security posture and policy," said the military figures in the letter.

In response, the Trump campaign called the endorsements a "great honor" in a statement.

"Under my administration, we will end the weak foreign policy of the last eight years, rebuild our military, give our troops clear rules of engagement and take care of our veterans when they come home," Trump claimed.

The letter comes days after a flow of endorsements from national intelligence, military figures and Republican national security experts for Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who was the former secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term.

Recent polls show that the race between Trump and Clinton is tightening in the final push ahead of the general election in November. Endi