Feral Jundi

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Industry Talk: Pentagon Lays Out Detailed Regulations for Security Contractors

Filed under: Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 2:48 AM

   Wow, Max Weber eat your heart out. lol Good job to the Defense Department and this is a great step.  Congrats to all those that have been involved with pushing this through and giving the government the guidance necessary to make this a reality.

   Hopefully between now and August, some Kaizen will be applied to this document so it truly is something we can rally around and it will be interesting to hear what the voices in the industry have to say about it.

   As to the next crucial step–have enough regulators to actually enforce this stuff.  I know I am asking for too much, but if you want a quality product, the government is going to have to step up and monitor this stuff.  I do not advocate micro-managing, but I do advocate visiting all the sites out there where contractors are posted or driving at and get involved a little.  Get some shared reality and understand the job at hand for this industry, so you can apply these regulations with a little common sense.  We are not out there to do bad, we are out there because we want to protect the customer and represent the cause. –Matt

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Pentagon lays out detailed regulations for security contractors

By Elizabeth Newell

July 17, 2009

The Defense Department released an interim final rule Friday laying out policy regarding the use of private security contractors in war zones.

The interim rule, which is effective immediately, modifies the Code of Federal Regulations to include policies and procedures for selecting, training, equipping and overseeing private security contractors.

The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, which filed the rule, wrote that it is “of critical importance” to address insufficient policy and guidance regulating the actions of security contractors working for Defense and other agencies in war zones.

“It will procedurally close existing gaps in the oversight of private security contractors, ensure compliance with laws and regulations pertaining to inherently governmental functions, and ensure proper performance by armed contractors,” the rule stated.

The rule requires combatant commanders to develop detailed guidance for security contractors operating in their geographic area of responsibility. The guidance must address a range of specific issues, from ensuring private security contractors have the proper training and certification to carry weapons to coordinating communication between PSCs and military forces.

The rule, which is open for comment until Aug. 13, states that private security contractors must document and report incidents involving weapons discharges, attacks, deaths or injuries of PSCs or as a result of action by PSCs, or destruction of property. The contractors must also report any active, nonlethal countermeasures taken in response to a perceived threat if that incident “could significantly affect U.S. objectives with regard to the military mission or international relations.”

In filing the rule, Defense officials said the timing was critical, as the increase of troops in Afghanistan will result in a corresponding rise in the number of private security contractors there.

Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association, which represents private security firms, said the rule codifies practices Defense has been implementing for awhile. It makes sense to formalize lessons learned in Iraq so they can apply in Afghanistan, he said. Until now those lessons have been addressed piecemeal through amendments to contracts with security firms.

“A lot of the contractual issues have been largely sorted out in Iraq, but we’re seeing them pop up again in Afghanistan,” Brooks said. “They’re going to have to be sorted out in Afghanistan, which can be a little bit of a painful process, so this is good.”

Erik Quist, general counsel for EOD Technology Inc., a Tennessee-based firm providing security and ordnance disposal services, agreed that most of the rule’s requirements mirror what Defense has been writing into security service contracts.

“It’s not new, it’s not burdensome and the fact that there is now, at this level of government, an official articulation and direction of the process, that’s very important,” Quist said. “If we know what the process should be we don’t have to fret that if something’s absent from our contract, we won’t know what to do. Institutionalizing these requirements under the pending new rule is an important part of the overall effort to protect the taxpayer’s best interests while at the same time establish a process to utilize the very valuable role private security companies can play in supporting the government.”

Story here.

 

Cool Stuff: Carnivorous Robots — The Fly Stealing Robot

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Technology — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 2:09 AM

     I would love to have a few of these for contracts. lol  It seems everywhere you go for a deployment, there are usually flies or mosquitos.  So I applaud any devilish and ingenious ways of eradicating the things. I think this contraption takes the cake. –Matt

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Fly Stealing Robot

Carnivorous Robots Eager to Eat Your Pests

UK-based designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau believe that, if robots are ever to be welcomed into people’s homes, they’ll need to fit in with the rest of the furniture, and earn their keep. Their prototypes trap and digest (microbial fuel cell) pests like flies and mice to gain energy – see video demonstrating how they work.

*****

Fly-stealing robot

This robot is meant to appeal to people with a dark sense of humour.

Its design is intended to encourage spiders to build webs between the pegs on the backboard.

Any flies trapped in the web are tracked by a camera (right).

After no movement has been sensed for 10 minutes, the robotic arm (left) picks out the dead fly and drops it into the fuel cell, generating electricity to partially power the camera and robotic arm.

The robot gets the rest of its energy from a fuel cell housed underneath a conventional ultraviolet fly killer.

(Image: Auger-Loizeau)

Link here.

 

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Quotes: Secretary of Defense Gates Answers a Question About Contractors

Filed under: Quotes — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 4:15 AM

   I thought that this was an interesting little quote and worthy of a mention here on FJ. On a funny note, notice the liberal use of ‘and’ in Sec. Gate’s replies?-Matt

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SEC. GATES: So now I’ll take a few questions. Yes, sir?

Q     Sir, Sergeant — (inaudible) — from 57-TRANS. A question, the subject is civilian contractors, especially down-range, the populace of over 2,000 civilian contractors doing or taking our jobs — i.e., truck drivers. Is there — the reasoning on that, sir?

SEC. GATES: Well, you’re talking about down-range or here at home?

Q     (Off mike.) Both, sir.

SEC. GATES: What we’re trying to do — and I think that the Congress has obviously taken a lot of interest in this, and I think, at the high point in Iraq we had on the order of 160,000 contractors, and probably only about a third of them were actually American contractors.

     And the contractors did everything but running the dining facility (DEFAC) and doing the laundry, doing the cleaning chores, doing some security work. But, the need was to try and free up as many soldiers for actual combat duty, rather than having them do things that civilian contractors could do. The problem is, we’ve — I think we let it grow without the kind of controls that we should, in terms of looking at it repeatedly.

     And I’ll just give you an example of what we’re working on right now — and, frankly, prompted by some questions from Senator Webb, and it was how we have turned over increasing numbers of training roles to civilian contractors, and where should we have a combat veteran doing that training, and where could we have a civilian doing it? And I think we’ve — we really had no idea where that line should be drawn. And we’re going back and looking at that now.

      And so, for example, for the Air Force it probably doesn’t make any sense to have a combat-capable pilot teach somebody how to fly for the first time in a Beechcraft just to get that kind of “Flying 101.” On the other hand, when that person graduates to an F-15 or an F-16, it probably ought to be a combat trained veteran or a person in uniform who’s teaching them. So, we’re kind of going back through all of these roles, at this point, to figure out where military ought to be doing these things and where civilian contractors can be.

      To tell you the truth, we’ve got a contractor problem on the civilian side of the government as well. I discovered, when we started working on this issue, that I actually have more contractors working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense than I do Civil Servants. And we’re going to fix that too. So, it is a problem.

      And I think that there is enough of a demand signal for experienced soldiers that nobody has to worry about losing their job. But, the question is, how can we make the best possible use of our soldiers and the skills that they’ve acquired?        And so you’ve raised an issue that’s taken a lot of our time and that we’re focused on, and it’s one that we need to get better control of.

Link to quote here.

 

Cool Stuff: Small Wars Journal $8,000 Writing Competition

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 12:33 AM

    This is great and I hope to see some FJ readers submit a paper.  Good luck. –Matt

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Small Wars Journal $8,000 Writing Competition – Warning Order

July 17, 2009

Papers are sought on the topics below. Winning entries and select others will be published in future special volumes of Small Wars Journal. For each of the two topics, a $3,000 Grand Prize and two $500 Honorable Mentions will be awarded. Hence $8,000 total purse.

Papers should be 3,000 to 5,000 words in length. Papers will be blind reviewed and judged primarily for clarity of presentation, relevant insights to the question asked, and overall significance of the key points made to the practice of small wars. No extra points awarded for length, name dropping, or how epic the incidents discussed were as distinct from the weight of the insights. Papers need not be OIF- / OEF-centric. Papers must resonate beyond a single silo, i.e. they must touch on at least some aspect of joint, coalition, interagency, multi-disciplinary, or cross-cultural significance.

Papers are to be submitted by midnight on November 10, 2009, with winners to be announced in January, 2010. One entry per author per question. Standard writing competition mumbo jumbo will apply, we will publish a final announcement shortly with those gruesome details, including detailed submission instructions.

We will not answer questions about this competition submitted in individual emails. Submit any good questions publicly in the comments below, but let’s not split hairs. The topics are what they are.

We greatly respect the works and insights of the usual suspects from the many DoD-centric writing competitions and anticipate some great and hard-to-beat entries from them. We would really like to see some stiff competition from fresh new voices and experience sets not often heard. Please spread the good word about this competition to the far reaches of the empire of important participants in the vastly broad and complex field of small wars. This is a level playing field, and let’s get all the players on it.

The topics are:

1. Security vs. [Jobs & Services & etc.] — horse and cart, or chicken and egg?

The “security is the military’s job” camp at an extreme expects more order than can be obtained by kinetic measures without a scorched earth approach. Alternately, it demands that the armed forces exceed their organizational mandate in early phases and then obediently (and wastefully?) hop back into their military box until things go awry again. Other camps may err by expecting too much from non-military actors in non-permissive environments, understating the risks they already do or should accept, or tinkering with building massive non-lethal expeditionary capabilities that may be unsustainable.

What does security really mean in a small war, how much is needed when, and how do you make meaningful security gains through the pragmatic application of affordable capabilities? How does security relate as an intermediate objective or an end state? Include examples of real successes and failures.

2. Postcards From The Edge – the practical application of the Whole of Government approach.

Organizational issues are being discussed from Goldwater-Nichols II to unity of effort and simple handshake-con. Whatever the structure on high, people from different walks of life and different functional expertise need to work together on the ground at the pointy end of the spear to deliver effects that matter. Discuss real experiences (personal, known firsthand, or researched and documented) of real people facing real challenges that offer relevant insights into the conduct of a small war.

Consider any, all, or none of the following:- Discuss what worked and/or what didn’t, and why.- How did participants from different agencies, branches, nations, etc. look at problems differently, and how were those views eventually reconciled (or not)?- Discuss personal challenges.- Discuss the moral and ethical challenges of small wars.- Approach as a turnover guide to a successor.- Inform operational approaches and “grand” tactics, techniques, and procedures.- Inform human resourcing / manpower / training & education.- Relevance for national resource strategy.- Relevance for go-to-war decisions and conflict strategy.

Story here.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Industry Talk: Wall Street Goes to War

Filed under: Afghanistan,Industry Talk,Iraq — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 5:05 AM

     Well if you want to know the DynCorp story, read this sucker.  As a contractor, we are so removed from the world of the CEO’s, investors and upper level management, and reading this article made that reality very clear.  I wonder if these guys have any ‘shared reality’ with their company?  Do they visit with the guard force in Qatar, or hang out at the mechanics shop at some airbase in Afghanistan or Iraq?  Or how about hang with the police advisors that are all over the world, or drive along during a poppy eradication mission in Afghanistan? Who knows, and for those that have worked for DynCorp, this story is for you. (some reverse shared reality I guess)

   And if any of you bigwigs with DynCorp are reading FJ, all I would like you to know is that your contractors/employees are your best asset out there–take care of them.  You are making a lot of money off of their hard work and sacrifice, and the least you can do is show them some respect and take care of your people.  I understand the concept of free market capitalism, and completely support it.  But that is not everything in life, and please take note, the most respected companies in the world do an excellent job of taking care of their people while still remaining profitable and providing an excellent service/product.

    The goal of any company in the defense industry should be to achieve what Google or Toyota has accomplished, and that is acceptance and respect.  To have your company’s name stand for something good, and not bad, should be your goal.  Be the company that contractors want to work for and customers want to do business with. And because most of DynCorp’s work is US government related, be the company that taxpayers feel is a good value. Be the company that a reporter could write about, and be in awe of it’s operations and total dedication to Kaizen and customer service/satisfaction.  And if you are profitable, there is no reason in the world to not take a little of that and invest the time and money into the little details that could make you the best.

     Maybe Forbes will write an article about a defense company like that some day? Some day….. –Matt

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Wall Street Goes to War

Nathan Vardi

Forbes

For 19 years Robert McKeon and Thomas Campbell were inseparable. They raised money and struck deals together, buying and selling dozens of companies, often in the defense sector–smallish outfits such as Athena Innovative Solutions, Integrated Defense Technologies and Vertex Aerospace. Working 12-hour days out of next-door offices in midtown Manhattan, they could hear each other’s phone conversations and knew the most personal details about each other. They golfed together, went skeet and trap shooting, traveled together for meetings and once shared a hotel room in Mexico. On Fridays they would dine, just the two of them, at Harry Cipriani, the ritzy Manhattan restaurant. “I believe we were pretty close to best friends,” says Campbell.

They also hatched the most lucrative deal of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their 2005 purchase of DynCorp International, the Falls Church, Va. provider of services to the U.S. military, landed McKeon and Campbell at the center of a booming and controversial business. The leveraged buyout also helped rip apart their relationship. McKeon ended up very rich, personally earning $350 million, or seven times his investment, and in control of a company that has emerged as the biggest winner in the war game. Campbell, forced out of DynCorp, came away with very little and has started over. Today the two former friends are locked in mortal combat–trading accusations of greed and betrayal in protracted litigation and competing for $25 billion a year in battleground services contracts for the U.S. government.

Battlefield contractors have been around for years. But their importance has grown in post-Cold War defense spending. Roughly 240,000 contractor employees, many of them foreign nationals, support U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, outnumbering the troops they serve. They provide security, military and police training, logistics and air support, reconstruction and every mundane service it takes to feed, clothe and clean fighting forces–collecting some $100 billion of the $830 billion U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for in the two wars. Though they don’t operate under the same rules of engagement as the U.S. military, contractors risk their lives; 1,360 of them have been killed and 20,000 injured in the two war zones.

(more…)

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