Modern War: The Decade of the Mercenary

Contrary to popular belief, Mercenaries are the “Silent Majority” in Obama’s Military, and the president’s “light footprint” approach to war has relied on thousands of Americans paid to fight — and die — in the shadows.

Last weekend, the New York Times published one of what will be many takes on President Barack Obama’s legacy as commander in chief. Retroactively shoehorning seven-plus years of varied military operations into one coherent “doctrine” is impossible, but dozens of articles will soon attempt to do so.

There is one significant aspect of this doctrine, however, that is rarely mentioned by the media and never by Obama: the unprecedented use of private contractors to support foreign military operations.

Obama has authorized the continuation or re-emergence of two of the most contractor-dependent wars (or “overseas contingency operations” in Pentagon-speak) in U.S. history. As noted previously, there are roughly three contractors (28,626) for every U.S. troop (9,800) in Afghanistan, far above the contractor per uniformed military personnel average of America’s previous wars. In Iraq today, 7,773 contractors support U.S. government operations — and 4,087 U.S. troops. These numbers do not include contractors supporting CIA or other intelligence community activities, either abroad or in the United States. On April 5, Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, declared during a Senate hearing that contractors made up 25 percent of his workforce.

Under Obama, more private military contractors have died in Iraq and Afghanistan than all the U.S. troops deployed to those countries. Between Jan. 1, 2009, and March 31, 2016, 1,540 contractors were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan (176 in Iraq and 1,364 in Afghanistan). During that period, 1,301 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq (289 in Iraq and 1,012 in Afghanistan). Last year was even more skewed toward contractors than the preceding six years; 58 contractorsdied in Afghanistan or Iraq, while less than half as many U.S. troops did (27) fighting in either country, includingSyria.

The first thing you learn when studying the role contractors play in U.S. military operations is there’s no easy way to do so. The U.S. government offers no practical overview, especially for the decade after 9/11. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) began to release data on contractors only in the second half of 2007 — no other geographic combatant command provides such data for their area of operations. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office found, “Although all [State Department, USAID, and DOD] are required to track the number of personnel killed or wounded while working on contracts and assistance instruments in Iraq or Afghanistan, DOD still does not have a system that reliably tracks killed and wounded contractor personnel.” Just last month, an especially exasperated John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told acting Secretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, “We look forward to the day you can tell us how many contractors are employed by [the Department of Defense].”

Read the Remainder at Foreign Policy

PMC News: Eric Prince and His Proposed Private “Air Force”

You probably remember Blackwater, the notorious U.S. mercenary company that rose to fame — or infamy, as it were — during the Iraq war. You might also remember Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who founded Blackwater in 1997. Prince had no choice but to sell his company after a spate of shootings involving Blackwater employees, including the one 2007 incident that resulted in the deaths of 17 unarmed civilians at Nisour Square in Baghdad. The company has since renamed itself “Academi.”

Now Prince is under scrutiny again — this time for reportedly trying to set up a private air force.

 

On April 11, The Intercept published a story accusing Prince of illegally weaponizing light aircraft. Prince, the story alleges, converted two Thrush 510Gs, which are usually used as crop dusters, into light attack planes capable of carrying a wide array of weapons and aerial reconnaissance payloads.

The extensive modifications reportedly included ballistic glass and Kevlar armor for the cockpit plus anti-explosive mesh for the fuel tank as well as hardpoints compatible with both NATO and Warsaw Pact guided and unguided munitions.

The story reads like a spy novel. It describes how Prince allegedly hid behind a network of shell companies, concealing the real nature of the airplane modifications from the board of the very company that paid for them, Frontier Services Group, of which Prince is the founder and chairman.

The Intercept’s story is incredibly well sourced, with former and current employees of FSG and Airborne Technologies — the Austrian company that handled the planes’ conversion — providing details and internal documents.

The scandal is obvious and extends beyond merely misappropriating company funds. Prince probably also breached U.S. and Austrian and E.U. export regulations concerning war materials. But even more baffling than Prince’s criminality is his obsession with the concept of a mercenary air force — and its utility and profitability in counterinsurgency operations, especially in African countries.

As the Intercept points out, Prince’s obsession with armed air wings goes back to his time at Blackwater. The company was notorious for deploying its own Little Bird helicopters, often seen with armed Blackwater agents hanging from their frames. But the Thrush deal takes that concept to a whole new level.

Erik Prince. Youtube capture

Airborne Technologies, in which Prince holds a 25-percent stake, fitted its signature SCAR-Pod surveillance sensor suit to the Thrush aircraft and also developed a custom pylon that would take both NATO and Eastern Bloc armaments, something that an ex-employee called “an impressive engineering accomplishment.”

The cost was substantial — $1 million for the airframes, with the customization adding at least another $7 million per plane, according to the story.

According to The Intercept’s sources, Prince claimed at various points to have potential customers lined up — including the governments of Mali, South Sudan and an unnamed Central Asian country. These purported customers would’ve either outright bought modified Thrush planes or rented them. But none of these deals came to fruition and today one of the two prototypes is in storage in an unidentified East African country, while the other remains in Austria.

At one point Prince raised with Airborne executives the prospect of converting up to 150 planes.

This poses an interesting question. Is there actually a market for a mercenary air force that would warrant the capital-intensive, high-risk and likely illegal investment Prince has made? Based on The Intercept’s sources, he had identified primarily African governments as potential customers, likely speculating that the continent’s current trouble with insurgencies could drive demand for the rugged, comparatively low-cost COIN planes.

But looking closely at the actual strategic and tactical needs, as well as the existing military capabilities of African countries, reveals that Prince’s private air force wouldn’t actually be a good fit for the majority of potential customers — and that’s leaving aside the legal and moral implications.

To be feasible, Prince’s hypothetical private air force would have to be considerable cheaper or, for political reasons, more desirable than simply sourcing competing airframes on the official international arms markets. Moreover, Prince’s Thrushes — rugged planes that are best suited for operations from dirt airstrips — are an odd choice of platform for the high-tech surveillance gear Prince added to them.

Despite the additional armor, a Thrush wouldn’t be able to defend against anything beyond small arms and small-caliber anti-aircraft fire. And to play to the strengths of Airborne’s advanced surveillance equipment, friendly forces would have to be trained and equipped with modern communication tools.

Instead of relying on a shady mercenary outfit and its hacked hardware, African governments could simply purchase — legally and without hassle — any of a wide range of advanced military aircraft specialized in the type of missions that Prince envisioned.

There’s the Brazilian Super Tucano, a plane of comparable size, ruggedness and price as the modified Thrush. Nine African countries operate this airframe or have professed an interest in acquiring it. Many more operate rotorcraft of Soviet design, often in modernized versions, which in many scenarios are more flexible than fixed-wing aircraft are.

More ambitious and financially better-off countries move upmarket and invest in mostly Russian hardware. Uganda, Algeria, and Angola are among the leading international operators of Su-30 multi-role fighters.

Especially in the Sahel, where mostly former-French colonies are currently fighting Al-Qaeda insurgents as well as the Boko Haram insurgency, local governments can also count on advanced aerial assets from allied Western nations. France has deployed advanced multi-role fighters and long-endurance drones to the region and, together with the United States, also provides aerial intelligence to its regional partners. The U.S. military flies fixed-wing surveillance planes out of airports such as that in Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso.

That doesn’t mean that Prince couldn’t find any customers for his planned mercenary air force. The government of South Sudan is a likely client, especially as Prince can draw upon his earlier dealings with Salva Kiir, the country’s embattled president. South Sudan is essentially broke, stuck in an ugly civil war, under threat of an arms embargo and has essentially no infrastructure capable of supporting more than the most basic aviation needs. At the height of the fighting, Kiir’s forces might have welcomed the capabilities that Prince’s modified Thrushes.

But Prince wasn’t able to deliver on a contract with South Sudan that included several modified aircraft, according to The Intercept. Even if the deal had gone through, customers with the profile of the South Sudanese government are few and far between. Prince would have tapped out the market with just one deal. Not to mention, Prince’s involvement would have become public sooner or later, guaranteeing an international outcry and strengthening the call for an arms embargo on his first and only customer.

Even by merely modifying and transferring two aircraft, Prince has likely exposed himself to criminal investigations in two countries. The concept of a roaming band of aerial mercenaries, in addition to having a very limited customer base, would likely not be tolerated by the international community.

Even historically, there are few precedents for Prince’s plans. While mercenaries have served as pilots — and still do — for air forces lacking domestic training infrastructure, this is a wholly different affair than providing a whole package, including planes and weapons.

An exception to the rule was the South African outfit Executive Outcomes, which offered its clients the services of its own Mi-8 and Mi-24 attack helicopters and MiG-23 fighters, as well as main battle tanks. E.O. thrived in the 1990s, when civil wars raged across Africa. The company was actually the inspiration behind many of the modern legislation that regulates the business of military contractors. Its dissolution in 1998 should have been in warning sign to Prince that his business plans were unlikely to succeed.

Read the Original Article at War is Boring

PMC’s Return to Iraq

Behind the president’s directive to ‘accelerate’ the counter-ISIS campaign came a surge in the number of contractors assisting in the campaign against ISIS.

The number of private contractors working for the U.S. Defense Department in Iraq grew eight-fold over the past year, a rate that far outpaces the growing number of American troops training and advising Iraqi soldiers battling Islamic State militants.

The sharp increase, disclosed in a recent Pentagon report to Congress, underscores the military’s reliance on civilians even for missions with relatively small troop presence.

“If you look at the size and the composition of the forces that have been deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, that’s changed markedly in the past year,” said Rick Brennan, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corp. and a retired Army officer.

As of January, 2,028 contractors were in Iraq, up from just 250 one year earlier, according to the Pentagon’s data. There are roughly 3,700 American troops there now, compared to 2,300 in January 2015.

 That number of military contractors represents just a fraction of the contractors employed by the U.S. in Iraq. In addition to the 2,028 Pentagon contractors, another 5,800 are employed by other agencies, including the State Department.

In the 1980s, the U.S. military decided to hire contractors to work in support roles that had historically been done by troops. That includes jobs like food services, maintaining housing units, water purification and “all those those other things that go with maintaining troops in the field for a long time,” Brennan said. The plus-up in Iraq is likely for contractors in those types of roles.

“What’s occurred then is as you deploy more forces to theater, you have to provide increased total number of contractors,” Brennan said.

During the Iraq War, there was a little bit more than one-to-one ratio of contractors to soldiers, he said. Now in Iraq, more than 30 percent (618) of the contractors are working in maintenance and logistics jobs. Nearly 20 percent (381) are translators and 13 percent (263) are in base support positions, according to the data. Contractors are also working in security, transportation, construction, communication support, training, management and administrative roles.

Nearly 70 percent of the contractors are American citizens, 20 percent are third-country nationals and the remaining are local Iraqis. The number of contractors the Pentagon can employ in Iraq is not capped, according to Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve.

Many of the contractors in Iraq and neighboring countries are from well known warzone companies like KBR, DynCorp, and Fluor Corporation, the three firms hired by the Army’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LogCap. The Pentagon awards individual “task order” deals to these each time it needs to support troops overseas.

“It makes tailoring a unit much more responsive to the needs of the commander because you don’t have to try to rip people [with a trade specialty] from other installations,” Brennan said.

KBR, in a November presentation to investors, said its LogCap services work in Iraq “grew in the period with further growth possible.”

Besides the LogCap contractors, the Pentagon can award independent contracts, according to Andrew Hunter, a former Pentagon official who now director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. In some instances, the Pentagon hires contractors already working for the government in order to speed up the process.

Even though U.S. troops withdrew fully from Iraq in 2011, many contractors stayed behind working at the American embassy or in logistical roles maintaining Iraq’s military equipment.

Congress ordered the Pentagon to provide detailed information about battlefield contractors following an incident in which private military contractors working for Blackwater USA killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad in September 2007.

Not all contractors in the warzone are base guards, laundry workers or chefs. The CIA and other intelligence agencies still use contractors like the former Blackwater or $2.2 billion firm DynCorp and other for paramilitary services. The number of those contractors, some who are closer to the battlefield than the military advisors, is classified and unknown to the public.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, has sent Congress regular updates about the number of contractors being employed in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2008. In July 2008, just following the 2007 troop surge, there were 162,428 Pentagon-funded contractors in Iraq, according to the data.

Read the Original Article at Defense One