Feral Jundi

Friday, December 17, 2010

Industry Talk: Army To Award 1.6 Billion Dollar Training Contract For Afghanistan Before New Year

     Wow, this contract is a big one. Also, thanks to Danger Room for posting an update on this contract. In the past I posted a deal about the transition of this contract from CIVPOL to CNTPO, and how DynCorp got edged out of the party when they were excluded under the new program. Then they protested and won the right to be a vendor, and this is where we are at now. It is a battle of the titans for a huge training contract.

     This is also important to the war effort because as I have reported in the past, NATO tends to make promises it cannot keep.  There are 900 training positions still open because of this lack of commitment. That is not good, and especially if the war strategy is highly dependent on getting the Afghan forces to a size and level of competency where they can take over the security of their country. Yet again, it will be contractors picking up the slack as NATO falters. –Matt

Edit: 12/21/2010- Here is the latest with this contract.  DynCorp just got hooked up. Here is the quote:

“Danger Room has confirmed that DynCorp, one of the leading private-security firms, has held on to a contract with the Army worth up to $1 billion for training Afghanistan’s police over the next three years. With corruption, incompetence and illiteracy within the police force a persistent obstacle to turning over security responsibilities to the cops by 2014, NATO has revamped much of its training efforts — except, apparently, the contractors paid lavishly to help them out.

The details: DynCorp will provide security personnel to train the Afghan cops at 14 different locations across the country. Those trainers will support the NATO training command run out of Kabul by Lt. Gen. William Caldwell in getting the police into an “independently functioning entity capable of providing for the national security of Afghanistan,” the Army’s Research Development and Engineering Command says in the award. The contract runs for two years and earns DynCorp $718.1 million, but an option to re-up for a third year brings the total price to $1.04 billion.”

Quote From Danger Room:

“Before the New Year, the Army will finally award a much-delayed $1.6 billion-with-a-b contract for a private security firm to supplement that NATO training command’s efforts to professionalize Afghan cops. That bid touched off a bureaucratic tempest between Blackwater/Xe Services and DynCorp, which held an old contract for the same job, as well as the State Department and the Army.

But not for much longer. The Army’s Contracting Command is in “the very final stages” of selecting the firm for the bid, Col. John Ferrari of the NATO training command tells Danger Room. “We’re expecting an announcement before the end of December, sometime in the next week or two.”

The contract is for “mentoring, training, and logistics services” to backstop Ferrari’s efforts, placing security contractors in embedded positions with the Afghan interior ministry and police units themselves, according to the terms of the bid. More than 80 firms have registered as “interested vendors” on the federal website announcing the contract. NATO is trying to build a 134,000-strong Afghan police force by October, and it’s short 900 trainers promised by U.S. allies.”

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R–NATO Training Mission Afghanistan/Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan (NTM-A/CSTC-A) Afghanistan Ministry of Interior (MoI) & Afghan National Police (ANP) Support Requirement

Solicitation Number: W91CRB10R0059

Agency: Department of the Army

Office: Army Contracting Command

Location: RDECOM Contracting Center – Aberdeen (RDECOM-CC)

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Industry Talk: US To Switch Afghan Police Training from DoS CIVPOL, to DoD CNTPO, DynCorp Protests

   This is big news, because there is a lot of money riding on the current set up, and DynCorp was sitting all fat and happy on the CIVPOL contract as the incumbent.  Now that DoD is taking it over and issued a new task order, only companies that are pre-qualified contractors for CNTPO get to participate.  Those companies are Lockheed, NG, Raytheon, Xe, and ARINC.

   The general feeling I am getting about this latest move, is that the DoD wants to have more control over the training of the Afghan police, and give them training that is more military-like.  The reason for this, is so these poor guys can actually survive the war, so they can go on to be effective in their normal police work.

   The Afghan police are already fighting more war, than doing police work, so it makes sense to harden them up a little.  Not too mention that when you have cops teaching Afghan police forces to shoot PKMs or RPGs, then the realm of police work skills gets trumped by war fighting skills.  So yeah, DoD would be a better choice.

   The other one that was interesting, was the hearing at CSPAN about Afghan National Security Forces.  Executives from Dyncorp, MPRI, and Xe all made a showing at this thing, and they all had something unique to say about their little chunk of the war.  Which further emphasizes the CNAS report as to the importance of contractors in the war effort.

   One thing that was mentioned by Xe, which I think is a great suggestion, is to integrate military trainers with Xe trainers, to insure a quality product.  That way, there is no blaming Xe for a poor job, when in fact, there is direct military oversight and integration into the training.  This makes sense for unity of effort, and totally makes sense about getting everyone on board with the strategy of the war.  I say mix that chocolate with the peanut butter! lol

   Probably the best part of military integration with programs like this, is security.  It is big military that has the guns, the air support and the communications necessary to make any enemy’s day, a bad day.  So for these sites that are located up in the hills, where training and security go hand in hand, having some military folks around with the big guns, would be a nice insurance policy for the defense.

   Be sure to check out the thread on this subject at SOCNET, and I look forward to any input from the readership about this. –Matt

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Afghan National Security Forces Contract Training

Friday, December 18, 2009

The December 18, 2009, hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting reviewed the adequacy and oversight of contract training for Afghanistan’s national army, national police, and border police — organizations critical for stability as the United States moves toward its newly stated goal of beginning withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country in July 2011.

At the end of November 2009, Afghan National Army strength was about 96,000; it is expected to grow to 134,000 by the end of October 2010 (40% growth) and is targeted reach 240,000 by 2013 (80% growth). The Afghanistan National Police was near 94,000 and is expected to be almost 97,000 strong by the end of 2009. While there is no programmed end strength set for 2010, the U.S.-led Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan has proposed growing the ANP to 160,000 by 2013 (65% growth).

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