US Military Contractors

From the initial invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq following the 9-11 attacks to now, the United States government and tax payers have spent a total of almost 1.6 trillion dollars since 2003 on the war to combat “terror.” With US military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands US service members are sent overseas to fight those who wish to do America harm. To move all those troops, equipment, logistical services, and then to pay for any injuries that may come to the vets after they come home can get fairly costly. As mentioned in the sentence before, the US has spent $1.6T since 2003 on this endeavor. Obviously fighting a war is very expensive, also it is very ugly in the long run. Is there a better way though? Is there a …show more content…
Many tend to be former special forces operators, or former military. How do you compare the costs of a private contractor and a public member of the military? How do you factor in the thousands of hours of training on the US governments dime that paid for this operator, and to utilize those skills in the civilian sector, just to come back and work as a subcontractor for the same government? Yes, the costs to deploy the contractor for the specific mission is cheaper, but you spent government funds training that person when they were a part of your military force. The cost is not the only way to measure overall value in comparing the two entities. Logistics officers often talk about value in terms of cost and speed of delivery and quality of overall service. If you need it tomorrow in a war zone, you can’t expect UPS to get it there for you, there are politics, and a lot of red tape to go through. The military may not have these issues; sure it may cost more to send a military C-130, but it arrives when you need it; whereas the civilian cargo plane may take three times as long. Think about Amazon shipping, you can get the free shipping, but it will take a week, where the next day is going to cost more, but the value of that is you have it next day. That affects quality and price. The private and public sectors might and do behave differently. The drive to shift activities from the public to the private sector for military activities is presumed efficiency. Most of the time the projected costs of hiring a PMC are not accurate when all is said and done, a lot of communication can be lost or misinterpreted. As good as outsourcing can be, doing things in-house can be much quicker and faster, also can be more discreet; which due to the topic being military in nature, is good for business. You avoid the hassle of vetting, clearing, and trusting the company, you also