Interesting documentary on third-party security being provided by KBR, Blackwater, and ex-SAS guys… Pretty comprehensive, interviews with dead guys families, military commanders, etc. Fascinating stuff.
Try the realplayer version, I couldn’t get the WM version to work properly.
But of course, if you’re a pure partisan, you won’t even bother watching because the White House has said that PBS is a liberal outpost, despite viewer polls to the contrary.
I guess the interesting question is do you grant these security contractors (“mercenaries”) the same esteem you would grant, say, a Marine corporal. Why or why not? Other than of course the $1000/day that guy is billing to the US taxpayer.
By the way, I provide services, including security, to the DoD in the Middle East and most of the guys I hire are ex-Marine corporals; and Army, and Air Force, and Navy, etc. All of this and we do it at less cost than what it would cost the military to provide the same service.
“By the way, I provide services, including security, to the DoD in the Middle East and most of the guys I hire are ex-Marine corporals; and Army, and Air Force, and Navy, etc. All of this and we do it at less cost than what it would cost the military to provide the same service.”
Just curious, how do you calculate that your services cost less than if DoD payed for them? Not disputing it, just wondering what costs you would factor in to how much the DoD would pay vs what you charge for your services.
The fact that services provided by my company cost less have been substantiated through Government cost analysis and A76 studies, for which it was determined that outsourcing of certain services results in a significant cost savings to the Government.
In recent years the trend has been away from the military performing various support functions and allowing them to do what they do best.
The Government doesn’t divulge the specifics of the their cost analysis, but A76 studies are intended to determine if it is cheaper to perform a service inhouse or not. The analysis is stacked against outsourcing as the Government is able to determine their Most Efficient Organization (MEO) and then take 10% off of that cost. If a technically qualified contractor comes in under this figure then the decision is made to outsource, and therefore, it saves the DoD.
A similar A76 circumstance occured in the recent past in your backyard at the Norfolk DFSP.
Roger. I have no doubt that outsourcing many services does actually save the govt money. I was just curious as to whether or not you would be able to say where some of those cost savings are. They considered for awhile the idea of hiring catering firms to run shipboard galleys. Frequently they don’t really consider all the ramifications of brining in an outside group. For instance, with the galley issue, no one considered the facts that ships couldn’t necessarily just give up the bodies who were running the messdecks, because they do other duties as well. They didn’t consider the additional cost of having to berth the catering employees while the ships are underway, the overtime costs for having those guysn available 7 days a week and underway 24 hours a day. They didn’t look at space concerns, or the need for caterers to comply with shipboard safety regulations with regards to electrical equipment, safety items, training for emergencies, etc, etc. Obviously it isn’t always the right choice to outsource. I just wondered if you could generally say which areas your firm would save the govt money.
In my opinion, I think most of the savings in the A76 situations comes from a comparison of benefits cost between Government Employees (Civil Servants, not active duty military) and contractors. But I do know on our Air Force contracts, we are able to accomplish the same with considerably less people (in some cases as much as half) than the Air Force due to the AF’s overspecialization and our ability to cross-utilize (kind of what you were refering to with messdecks). I agree it doesn’t work in all instances but I am confident in our circumstances, we are able to do it at less cost, partiuclarly on overseas contracts.
I caught that on the tube. I watched it with a vested interest as my brother is over in baghad right now working for dyncorp doing bodyguard work as well as site assessments and training. He’s a recently retired (20+ years) staff sgt marine, spent many years in force recon. he’s making probablly 4x what he was when he was in the service.
I think Frontline in general does a terrific job of getting a lot of views.
It’s a pretty nasty job, but they are paid a lot of money for their labor, I guess. But the program does raise interesting questions about the chain of command and whether you can really outsource this much manpower, especially armed manpower, without having real administrative and field problems.
It was sad to see the story of that SEAL who was down on his luck and had to go to make dough for his kids.
It doesn’t logically follow that you can pay people 4x the amount to do the same job yet be the cheaper option.
The military is forced to support a much larger bureacracy, though. And these private companies aren’t as obligated to deal with pesky issues like responsibility and accountability.
These guys wouldn’t have to take these jobs if they were paid well enough and taken care of after the mental/physical impact of war by the rich, spoiled children of privelege that send them off so happily to fight and die.
I don’t understand how soldiers don’t walk right up to whatever president is using them as a campaign backdrop and punch them right in the throat. Fortitude, I guess.
I actually had a guy, a young Republican in fact, actually say to me with a straight face that he didn’t have a deep sympathy for the troops because they simply had freely taken a job that inherently included a significant risk of being killed in combat. So much for the party of patriotism.
As for the cost advantage, I think it’s possible for private security companies can be cheaper, despite high pay, than the US Army, because of smaller bureaucracy, less training, fewer if any benefits, and a generally flatter hierarchy. However, I’m not sure this suggests that they are necessarily cheaper. Keep in mind that the US military, as huge and byzantine as it’s accounting no doubt is, probably has significant problems even costing its operations out accurately. And keep in mind that private operators also require a market equity return to make their business worthwhile to engage in.
I think you can very easily end up with the same problem that you have in healthcare. When you outsource your system to an operator who has the obvious incentive to provide as little value as possible for the most revenue in order to maximize return on equity, you end up in a situation where you’ve converted a nonprofit operation to a profit-based one, and the profit goes out of the system. In addition, you have basic care issues, as well as the layers of bureaucracy on both sides added simply to arbitrate claims. And hence you have the current multi-payor HMO system, which nobody appears to be happy with.
Outsourcing too much of the military has the potential to end up with the same situation - paying somebody excess returns to find ways to reduce your service levels. Sounds Kafkaesque, doesn’t it?
You guys have no idea what you are talking about. Contractors have greater accountability in most instances than the Government and the service has to be provided at a higher lever as a result of such contracting accountability. I deal with the lack of Government accountability (inappropriate evaluations, flawed contract awards, etc.) and the implementation of the Federal Acquisition regulations on a daily basis. We work along side military personnel who are not held to the letter of the regulations that we are required to perform (involving safety and security), while we are incessantly beat up by Quality Assurance Evaluators who are picking us apart to the letter of our Performance Work Statement and the corresponding regulations. A Government contractors livelihood is predicated on the measure of their past performance and if they do not provide superior service and what the Government deems “best value,” they will never win a Government contract in the future.