Feral Jundi

Friday, April 10, 2009

Industry Talk: David Isenberg’s Final Dogs of War Column

Filed under: Industry Talk — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 5:12 PM

    This sucks, and I really enjoyed reading David’s stuff.  He has done so much for furthering the discussion about our industry, and there will certainly be a void.  I hope he continues to throw out a Dogs of War style story every once in awhile.  So here is the last story. –Matt 

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Dogs of War: Lions and contractors and robots. Oh my!

Published: April 10, 2009 at 9:00 AM

By DAVID ISENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) — This is my final Dogs of War column. Since starting in January 2008, I have covered many different aspects of private military and security contracting, but they have been only a small portion of the total number of issues worth examining.

Like any other issue, there is good and bad news when it comes to contractors doing work that once upon a time people could only conceive of the government doing.

The good news is that despite the often-superficial coverage of the issue, people recognize that the use of contractors is not going away. So rather than wasting time complaining about it, people are dealing with it.

For example, the Obama administration has launched a campaign to change government contracting. In February it introduced a set of “reforms” designed to reduce state spending on private-sector providers of military security, intelligence and other critical services and return certain outsourced work back to government.

Note I wrote “return certain outsourced work back to government.” That is not mere semantics. The Obama administration seems to recognize that contractors are now the American Express card; one does not go to war or do “contingency operations,” to use the favored government euphemism, without them. And if it doesn’t, it will certainly realize it as it conducts its own surge of U.S. military forces to Afghanistan.

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Building Snowmobiles: Using Special Forces to Lead PMC’s in Darfur

Filed under: Africa,Building Snowmobiles,Sudan — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 8:29 PM

   David knocked out a good one with this article.  I had no idea such a paper existed, about using Special Forces and PMC’s together for small wars like what is going on in Darfur.  Why not?  I am sure Special Forces units are used to working with far less capable forces, why not combine them with a western PMC.  It would be interesting to hear some perspective on this from the snake eater community.  Or better yet, I would love to hear this Major Jorgensen on Combat Operator Radio talk about this concept.  

   As for combining the two groups and creating some kind of unity of command?  Incident Command all the way.  Matter of fact, if all NGO’s and Government types could get on the same band wagon of the Incident Command System, then we could all be speaking the same language out there.  It would be the middle ground, and something that would have excellent application in wars and other disasters.  This example of Special Forces combined with PMC’s reminds me of my smokejumper days.

    On fires, we would parachute in with two possible missions.  If the fire was small, then we would put it out ourselves with minimum support.  If the fire was big, or got big as we were on the ground, then we instantly transitioned to Incident Command mode and start to organize.  We would make our assessments, and call into dispatch on what we would need to put out our fire–from man power, to equipment and logistical support, to air power.  During that process, we would find our selves managing a whole slew of varied agencies and private contractors.  It would not be odd at all, to have a Bureau of Indian Affairs hand crew, a Type 2 Private Contractor hand crew, a Type 2 Contractor Crew from Southern California that had maybe a few guys that spoke english, an Engine or two from the Forest Service, a Cop from a local PD, and some structure Engines from the Local Fire Department, all on one fire.  The key to organizing such a mess of folks, is simple.  They were all red carded forest firefighters, and new the common language of Incident Command.  And if they didn’t, it was so simple, that it could be explained to them on the scene.  

     All in all though, most folks on a fire knew the drill.  They had to have programable radios that were set up on scene to communicate for that fire, they had to have the fire clothing and equipment, they had to know plan of attack and who the Incident Commander was, they had to know their part in the battle, and who the adjacent forces were, and they had to have some knowledge of fires and the red flag and fire watch out situations.  If they had a red card, that meant they knew what a forest fire was all about, and they knew what the incident commander was all about, and they worked from that point. 

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Friday, February 6, 2009

Industry Talk: PMC 2.0, by David Isenberg

Filed under: Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 7:08 PM

   Great little article by David about the evolution of the industry, with a mention of Combat Operator and Eeben’s blog.  I like the PMC 2.0 phrase, and that would be cool to see that as the new buzzword ‘du jour’.  –Matt

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Dogs of War: Private military contractors — mysterious? No.

Published: Feb. 6, 2009 at 3:09 PM

By DAVID ISENBERG

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (UPI) — A common refrain from many who observe the private military contracting industry is that it is opaque, shadowy, veiled, secretive, hidden, non-transparent, etc. Is this true? Yes and no, but mostly no.

When I first started following this industry in the early 1990s, it really was difficult to get information on it. Partly that was because there were relatively few companies to follow. Three companies garnered most of what little coverage existed: Executive Outcomes of South Africa, Sandline of Great Britain and U.S.-based MPRI. And the first two were not particularly eager to answer press inquiries.

MPRI, whose not-so-modest motto back then was “the greatest corporate assemblage of military expertise in the world” because it was founded and run by relatively high-ranking retired U.S. military officers, escaped that pigeonhole thanks to the efforts of one of its vice presidents, whose openness and charm enabled MPRI to gain enormous publicity for its training efforts in the Balkan wars. But it was an anomaly back then.

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