The interesting part of this report is that there is very little change from last quarter as far as the overall numbers. In the 3rd quarter, there were 136,901 contractors overall, and in this quarter there are 137,407. So it is an increase, but by a small margin.
The other thing that jumped up at me was that contractor numbers actually increased in Iraq. In the third quarter we saw 7,336 and in this quarter we see 9,000!
We also see some numbers for the APPF force which was supposed to replace contractors in Afghanistan. The statistic that perked me up was the amount of ‘risk management consultants’–220– that was required to watch over the 2,407 APPF folks. These risk management consultants are contractors that represent the companies, and it is just funny that with all of this attention placed on the APPF being the solution, that they still need that many ‘consultants’. lol
The other interesting statistic is the Private Security numbers, or the armed contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, there is more use of security contractors from other countries other than the US. The local national use really hasn’t changed that much.
In Afghanistan, you see an increase in US private security use. In the 3rd quarter we saw 480 US security folks, and in the 4th quarter we see an increase to 2,014! Now I am going to speculate that perhaps the reason for this, is the increase in insider attacks and an increase in using Americans to guard FOB’s. The military is wanting to hand over the security of these bases so that it can save some money and use the remaining manpower for training missions or combat support for their other operations out there. –Matt