Really?Sea Skimmer wrote:Only some very high levels of logistics have gone private and under a program started during the Clinton Administration, which has worked just fine. Most of the US propositioned force has been privately owned and operated for over a decade. the only supply problems we've seen in Iraq where the result of problems in-between the docks and the fighting men, and that's all still military personal.Patrick Degan wrote:
Army logistics has been privatised, which has already resulted in some of the supply fuckups to the troops in Iraq, and Rumsfool has been the main proponnent for doing away with large ground formations in favour of "leaner, meaner" lightning-response forces.
And...http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines
January 24, 2003
Privatized Army in Harm's Way
An attack on civilians in Kuwait illustrates the dangers faced by those hired by the Pentagon. Critics question the costs of contracting out.
By Mark Fineman, Times Staff Writer
UDAIRI RANGE, Kuwait -- They work quietly and unseen six miles from Iraq, maintaining a vast desert battlefield for thousands of U.S. combat troops, coaching the Army's forces through training exercises within chemical-weapons range of Iraq's southern bases.
They live in bomb-hardened warehouses in a remote Qatari desert camp within Scud-missile range of Baghdad, fine-tuning some of the world's most sophisticated satellite and computer systems in America's most forward command-and-control center, as they process the most sensitive U.S. intelligence data.
And on the tip of the Horn of Africa, they manage a Special Operations base, overseeing everything from the mess hall, laundry service and construction crews to the latrines for America's most secretive soldiers — Navy SEALs and other Special Forces troops who are hunting in a risky region brimming with Al Qaeda terrorist operatives.
The war on terrorism and a looming invasion of Iraq have raised the profile of America's growing private army, giving it unprecedented prominence and importance.
Thousands of unarmed American engineers, technicians, electricians, weapons specialists and retired military officers working for U.S. corporations under Defense Department contracts are deployed closer to present and imminent war zones than ever before. And as Tuesday's ambush slaying of a San Diego software engineer in Kuwait starkly showed, they are in harm's way as never before.
The attack was a reminder of the potential deadliness of their work for many of those contractors, for the specialized corporations that employ them, and for the Pentagon, which relies heavily on them for logistics, training and equipment. It was the third attack on U.S. personnel in Kuwait since October, but the first on American civilians, and it has refocused such unresolved issues as who is responsible for the contractors' safety in what has become a global war zone.
But this week's attack by suspected terrorists also fed into a broader debate about whether the Pentagon has gone too far and too fast in privatizing the U.S. military in the past decade, which has seen the size of the U.S. armed forces reduced by one-third and the number of contractors grow exponentially.
Behind the transformation is an industry that is generating $100 billion to $200 billion a year for fewer than 1,000 companies, according to Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution fellow whose book, "Corporate Warriors," is due out this spring. So rapidly has the corporate military sector grown, Singer concludes, that there will be one contractor for every 10 soldiers in a new war against Iraq. By contrast, by most estimates there were as few as one for every 50 troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Deborah Avant, an associate professor at George Washington University whose study of the industry, "The Market of Force," also will be published soon, said America no longer can fight a war without contractors — especially the specialized post-Sept. 11 missions its armed forces are conducting overseas.
"We don't have the people," she said. "We don't have a draft. We've downsized the forces by one-third, and the number of missions in which they are involved has increased."
A senior official of Virginia-based MPRI Inc., which has been mentoring and maintaining the U.S. Army exercises in northern Kuwait for the past three years, framed the phenomenon in basic terms.
No KP for Soldiers
"In the new, downsized Army, soldiers, for example, don't do KP anymore," he said. "We don't need to spend all that money and effort training a fine combat soldier and have him peeling potatoes."
The Pentagon and private sector have moved so quickly to fill that void, though, that Avant, Singer and others say the contracts may have eclipsed the Defense Department's ability to supervise, audit and police the civilian firms. And because most contracts are classified, legislative or public oversight is more difficult than if the military performed those tasks.
"You also don't have a uniform policy for protecting military contractors partly because there's no transparency in their contracts," said David Isenberg, senior analyst for the British American Security Information Council, a think tank.
But one basic premise of the shift toward private contractors — that it is cheaper — has yet to be documented, as the Pentagon acknowledges. And if the military starts committing its own forces to protect contractors, it could defeat the goal of freeing up the troops for combat.
Industry sources and several military officers in the field insisted that defense officials do keep a tight rein on the contractors, closely auditing their financial accounts and the way they execute their contracts.
But a closer look at those privatized tasks shows just how sensitive, sweeping and potentially dangerous they have become.
DynCorp, a Virginia-based government contractor that recently announced it was being bought by Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, provides maintenance, storage and security for the U.S. Army and Air Force in the Persian Gulf region. The company is also upgrading some of the FBI's internal computer systems. And it is providing bodyguards for Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, under a contract with the State Department.
One of the largest and most ubiquitous contractors is Texas-based Halliburton Co.'s Kellogg Brown & Root, a division better known as Brown & Root. The company and its small army of logistics experts are improving, managing or expanding U.S. military bases from the Camp Lemonier special forces outpost in Djibouti to detention facilities for Al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, under two broad Defense Department contracts that are potentially worth $1.2 billion during the coming decade.
Brown & Root's open-ended logistics contracts from the Army and Navy — indeed much of the military privatization campaign — are grounded in a 1992 study the company did for the Defense Department that several analysts said formed the template for privatization of logistics for a downsized U.S. military. Soon after the company delivered the classified study, which reportedly concluded that the Pentagon could save hundreds of billions of dollars by outsourcing, Brown & Root won its first competitively bid logistics contract.
Vice President Dick Cheney was defense secretary when the first Brown & Root study was done, and he became chief executive of its parent company, Halliburton, when he retired, providing fodder for privatization's critics and conspiracy theorists. Through the 1990s, Brown & Root's military business grew exponentially, but a company spokesperson, saying that had nothing to do with the Cheney connection, noted that Brown & Root has been doing extensive government work since the 1940s.
Officials at Brown & Root, MPRI and other contracting firms said safety of personnel is their top priority. But they said that ensuring it is no simple task.
"No one in MPRI has ever carried a gun as a civilian, and basically it's because we've never had a reason to," the official said. The company has about 90 employees in Kuwait, most of whom are retired military personnel.
Protection an Issue
"Protection of contractors on the battlefield is an issue," he said. "The issue is: Who's going to protect them?"
A Pentagon spokesman said that in forward deployments such as Kuwait, the U.S. forces are ultimately responsible for the contractors' safety. Most contracts also give the civilians access to the same military hospitals and facilities available to military personnel, although insurance, hazard pay and other war-zone contingencies are the companies' responsibility. The spokesman added that the Pentagon has no official estimate of the number of private contractors in the gulf.
But there are other layers of security that demonstrate just how deeply the modern battle theater has been privatized.
When contractors like MPRI's "observer controllers" in Kuwait move from one U.S. facility to another, for example, they travel with armed security escorts provided not by the U.S. military, but by another private contractor — an American company that the Defense Department separately has hired to augment security at entrance gates and perimeters for its bases in Kuwait.
And MPRI wrote the book on military contractors in war zones. The company helped the Army write "Contractors on the Battlefield," a manual that serves as a primer for the military in dealing with contractors in places such as Kuwait. It was written under government contract.
Even after the Tuesday shooting, though, MPRI officials insisted that most contractors in the region remain undeterred.
Industry sources said contractors are attracted by the high pay and good benefits. But many are also retired military officers who miss the soldier's life, said retired 1st Sgt. Bob Meyle, who recruits MPRI personnel.
"The founding concept of the company was there is a national resource called retired military personnel, and if you take them and put them into a company, they can do anything," the senior MPRI official said.
Other contractors in the field, though, are among a newer generation of high-tech engineers and specialists who reflect not merely the rapid privatization but also the dramatic modernization of America's armed forces.
Weapons, intelligence and surveillance systems — all of them private-sector products — have become so sophisticated so quickly that the manufacturers often must send technicians into the battlefield along with the technology to manage and maintain it. Michael Pouliot, the San Diego man killed Tuesday, co-founder of the software firm Tapestry Solutions, was in Kuwait installing software to facilitate split-second battlefield decisions from a remote computer.
Whatever their backgrounds, the contractors are facing new risks. And the Pentagon is facing a new dilemma.
"You're outsourcing because you want to relieve the burden on your own forces," said Brookings' Singer. "You also have limits on what these companies can do to not be perceived as mercenaries; for example, the U.S. government says they cannot be armed.
"Well, now they're actually operating in a combat zone that's dangerous even well behind the lines.... So if you deploy your forces to protect them, you lose that savings."
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
And...http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/opinion/12KRUG.html
August 12, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Thanks for the M.R.E.'s
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He'd been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.'s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" — and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.
Other stories are far worse. Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?
The U.S. military has always had superb logistics. What happened? The answer is a mix of penny-pinching and privatization — which makes our soldiers' discomfort a symptom of something more general.
Colonel Hackworth blames "dilettantes in the Pentagon" who "thought they could run a war and an occupation on the cheap." But the cheapness isn't restricted to Iraq. In general, the "support our troops" crowd draws the line when that support might actually cost something.
The usually conservative Army Times has run blistering editorials on this subject. Its June 30 blast, titled "Nothing but Lip Service," begins: "In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." The article goes on to detail a series of promises broken and benefits cut.
Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills — reversed when the public heard about it — was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)
There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat — and the system failed.
According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors — and their insurance companies — get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea.
Military privatization, like military penny-pinching, is part of a pattern. Both for ideological reasons and, one suspects, because of the patronage involved, the people now running the country seem determined to have public services provided by private corporations, no matter what the circumstances. For example, you may recall that in the weeks after 9/11 the Bush administration and its Congressional allies fought tooth and nail to leave airport screening in the hands of private security companies, giving in only in the face of overwhelming public pressure. In Iraq, reports The Baltimore Sun, "the Bush administration continues to use American corporations to perform work that United Nations agencies and nonprofit aid groups can do more cheaply."
In short, the logistical mess in Iraq isn't an isolated case of poor planning and mismanagement: it's telling us what's wrong with our current philosophy of government.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
And an excerpt from the Financial Times (link unavailable)http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/wood080103.html
NATIONAL SECURITY
Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq
BY DAVID WOOD
c.2003 Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON -- U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said.
Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive, dust-blown shelters without windows or air conditioning. The Army has invested heavily in modular barracks, showers, bathroom facilities and field kitchens, but troops in Iraq were using ramshackle plywood latrines and living without fresh food or regular access to showers and telephones.
Even mail delivery -- also managed by civilian contractors -- fell weeks behind.
Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance. Civilians help operate Navy Aegis cruisers and Global Hawk, the high-tech robot spy plane.
Civilian contractors may work well enough in peacetime, critics say. But what about in a crisis?
"We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt. Gen. Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, said in an interview.
One thing became clear in Iraq. "You cannot order civilians into a war zone," said Linda K. Theis, an official at the Army's Field Support Command, which oversees some civilian logistics contracts. "People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out."
As a result, soldiers lived in the mud, then the heat and dust. Back home, a group of mothers organized a drive to buy and ship air conditioners to their sons. One Army captain asked a reporter to send a box of nails and screws to repair his living quarters and latrines.
For almost a decade, the military has been shifting its supply and support personnel into combat jobs and hiring defense contractors to do the rest. This shift has accelerated under relentless pressure from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to make the force lighter and more agile.
"It's a profound change in the way the military operates," said Peter W. Singer, author of a new book, "Corporate Warriors," a detailed study of civilian contractors. He estimates that over the past decade, there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of contract civilians performing work the military used to do itself.
"When you turn these services over to the private market, you lose a measure of control over them," said Singer, a foreign policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.
Replacing 1,100 Marine cooks with civilians, as the Corps did two years ago, might make short-term economic sense.
But cooks might be needed as riflemen -- as they were during the desperate Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. And untrained civilians "can walk off the job any time they want, and the only thing the military can do is sue them later on," Singer said.
Thanks to overlapping contracts and multiple contracting offices, nobody in the Pentagon seems to know precisely how many contractors are responsible for which jobs -- or how much it all costs.
That's one reason the Bush administration can only estimate that it is spending about $4 billion a month on troops in Iraq. White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten said this week he could not even estimate the cost of keeping troops in Iraq in fiscal 2004, which begins Oct. 1.
Last fall the Army hired Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston-based contractor, to draw up a plan for supporting U.S. troops in Iraq, covering everything from handling the dead to managing airports. KBR, as it's known, eventually received contracts to perform some of the jobs, and it and other contractors began assembling in Kuwait for the war.
But as the conflict approached, insurance rates for civilians skyrocketed -- to 300 percent to 400 percent above normal, according to Mike Klein, president of MMG Agency Inc., a New York insurance firm. Soldiers are insured through the military and rates don't rise in wartime.
It got "harder and harder to get (civilian contractors) to go in harm's way," said Mahan, the Army logistics chief.
The Army had $8 million in contracts for troop housing in Iraq sitting idle, Mahan said. "Our ability to move (away) from living in the mud is based on an expectation that we would have been able to go to more contractor logistical support early on," Mahan said.
Logistics support for troops in Iraq is handled by dozens of companies, each hired by different commands and military agencies with little apparent coordination or oversight.
Patrice Mingo, a spokesman for KBR, declined comment. Don Trautner, an Army official who manages a major logistics contract with KBR for troop support in Iraq, said he knew of "no hesitation or lateness" by KBR civilian contractors. "There were no delays I know of," he said, making clear that he did not speak for other contractors.
July 31, 2003
Financial Times
8/11/03
But the growing dependence on such private sector support concerns some military experts. Part of the problem is that contractors are not subject to military discipline and could walk off the job if they felt like it. The only thing the military could do would be to sue the contractor later on - the last thing on the mind of a commander on the battlefield.
This is not just an idle possibility. Since the end of the recent war in Iraq, US army officers have complained that their troops suffered poor living conditions because civilian contractors sometimes failed to show up. Even the mail handled by Halliburton was slow to get through.
"We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt Gen Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, was quoted as saying by Newhouse News Service this month. He said it got "harder and harder to get (them) to go in harm's way".
One senior US official says the use of private contractors has "been going on now for at least two decades and it has really intensified lately and has got some of the military planners . . . pulling their hair out". In part, says the official, this is because US military planners are looking at a possible war on the Korean peninsula, one that would be "a more traditional conventional war, if you will, one that will be bloody as hell and fought on cross-compartmental terrain that makes the desert looks like child's play.
"These people can't do that," the official continues. "You've got to have military cooks and military people doing all this logistics tail and so forth. You aren't going to get contractors to go. You have got this situation . . . where better than 20 or 30 per cent of services that used to be done in house by combat trained people are now (done by) contractors."
