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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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.