Well we found a way to still continue Mission creep, and it appears we are relying more and more on Mercs. Which opens us up to a vulnerability. What say ye? Washingtons reliance on unheralded private military contractors to fight its wars has mutated into a strategic vulnerability. U.S. Special Operations Forces, for instance, have contractors working in Syria, performing tasks ranging from intelligence analysis to warzone logistics and possibly training foreign fighters, as they once did in Iraq. Now, as President Obama prepares to hand off combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere, to his successor, hes also bequeathing a way of war that relies on large numbers of guns-for-hire while, at least formally, restricting the number of American troops sent overseas. Since 2009, the ratio of contractors to troops in war zones has increased from 1 to 1 to about 3 to 1. Private military contractors perform tasks once thought to be inherently governmental, such as raising foreign armies, conducting intelligence analysis and trigger-pulling. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they constituted about 15 percent of all contractors. But dont let the numbers fool you. Their failures have an outsized impact on U.S. strategy. Contractors also encourage mission creep, because contractors dont count as boots on the ground. Congress does not consider them to be troops, and therefore contractors do not count again troop-level caps in places like Iraq. The U.S. government does not track contractor numbers in war zones. As a result, the government can put more people on the ground than it reports to the American people, encouraging mission creep and rendering contractors virtually invisible.....snip~ http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/08/americas-addiction-mercenaries/130731/?oref=d-mostread
This might be where the Pentagon lost some money, huh? Today, 75 percent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan are contracted. Only about 10 percent of these contractors are armed, but this matters not. The greater point is that America is waging a war largely via contractors, and U.S. combat forces would be impotent without them. If this trend continues, we might see 80 or 90 percent of the force contracted in future wars. Contracting is big business, too. In the 2014 fiscal year, the Pentagon obligated $285 billion to federal contracts—more money than all other government agencies received, combined. That’s equal to 8 percent of federal spending, and three and a half times Britain’s entire defense budget. About 45 percent of those contracts were for services, including private military contractors. This means that contractors are making the ultimate sacrifice. Today, more contractors are killed in combat than soldiers—a stunning turnaround from the start of the wars Iraq and Afghanistan, when fewer than 10 percent of casualties were contractors. By 2010, more contractors were dying than troops. However, the real number of contractor deaths —versus the “official” tally—remains unknown. In response, the Obama administration has quietly accelerated deployments. From an initial 274 troops sent to Iraq in 2014, the White House has crept up to 4,647 troops, the maximum allowed under the current troop cap. But these troops are only half the story. The U.S. government has surged another 4,970 contractors onto the ground. And a footprint of nearly 10,000 doesn’t look so light. No international laws exist to regulate the mercenary industry. What we’re left with: If anyone with enough money can wage war for any reason they want to, then new superpowers will emerge: the ultra-rich and multinational corporations. Oil companies and oligarchs should not have armies.....snip~ http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/08/americas-addiction-mercenaries/130731/?oref=d-mostread
