Soldiers Versus Defense Contractors
15 Dec. New York Times editorial - Soldiers Versus Defense Contractors.
Quote:
It's what passes for crunch time at the Pentagon. Word has now gone out that $32 billion in savings must be found out of the $2.3 trillion the Defense Department is planning to spend in the next five years. After the Pentagon's spending orgy over the past five years, there is plenty of scope for cutting, without weakening America's defenses - but only if the cuts come out of the most costly and least needed Air Force and Navy weapons programs, not from the money required to replenish and re-equip the Army and Marine ground forces that have been worn down by Iraq.
Alleviating the dangerous strain on America's overstretched, underrested and increasingly taxed land-based forces must be the Pentagon's highest priority for the next five years...
Contractors Doing Combat Service Support is a Bad, Bad Idea
From "Lost Army Job Tied to Doubts on Contractor," NYT, 17 Jun 08
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/wa...hp&oref=slogin
Quote:
Army officials denied that Mr. Smith had been removed because of the dispute, but confirmed that they had reversed his decision, arguing that blocking the payments to KBR would have eroded basic services to troops. They said that KBR had warned that if it was not paid, it would reduce payments to subcontractors, which in turn would cut back on services.
“You have to understand the circumstances at the time,” said Jeffrey P. Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command. “We could not let operational support suffer because of some other things.”
Whether the rest of the content of the article is correct, what Parsons says in the sixth paragraph is truly scary. Essentially, he admits that even if the contractor is screwing the government it has to be overlooked because the contractor is holding the troops hostage. Nice business ethic on the part of the contractors there. But the important thing is that there's almost certainly a yellow flag magnet on the back of their cars and a flag pin on their lapels.
I find it strange that SecDef would have gotten involved in this personnel issue unless there was something much bigger at stake. I also don't much care for the bonuses -- seems like a backdoor way to pay the contractors more than was contracted.
In my humble estimation this problem is way bigger than anything going on with the AF, and Gates would do well to get a handle on it.
Bottom line, can we please relearn that Rev War lesson about contractors not being the right men for the job of handling logistics at war, especially at the front lines? The sooner the better.
An interesting tangent to this. My husband and I were discussing the article, and he said that one of his Marines noted, with pride, that he'd been on three deployments and had never served on a FOB with a DFAC. My husband either. This point of pride will make for an interesting point in the conclusion of my dissertation (on gastronomy and morale). If my thesis is that civilian socio-cultural influences affect the decisions regarding gastronomy for morale, then it is understandable that conspicuous consumption has become a part of logistics effort. It also makes sense that military personnel will potentially bristle at having conspicuous consumption forced upon them. You don't join the military if conspicuous consumption is your objective or your interest.
Regards,
Jill
Thoughts one might consider
With all its flaws -- and it has plenty -- contracting basic services has merit. The troops hate that kind of stuff and the cessation of a lot of grass mowing, rock painting and, yes K.P or Mess Duty plus a lot of other minor annoyances has helped keep folks in all the services. The Navy can't do that on ships and thus, they have a very minor retention problem because of that scut work. Add it back into the Army, Marines and AF and it will cause retention problems. In an era of an aging population and a kinder gentler world where military service is eschewed by many that may not be a good idea.
It's easy for those who don't have to do that kind of make work (which is what some of it is) and necessary but unpleasant work to overlook the inhibiting effect on Joe. Joe doesn't do windows if he can avoid it -- and, if we're going to train him well enough to go risk his life (which we don't do well) then the least we can do id let him skip washing windows.
The the Army and Marines get plenty of enlistees for the combat arms and for both services, the re-up rates in the combat skills are great. Not so in the Combat service support arena. Enlistments are down and reenlistments are far lower than in the combat arms.
I'm not sure that a reversion to the WW II / Korea / Viet Nam era Army (all effectively the same; little changed) is a good idea. Having been a part of it, there was a lot of crookedness and corruption, petty and major theft by people in uniform. There was also a lot of mediocre performance. Even stupidity -- like the 1LT who futilely and rather foolishly told me and about 15 armed, dirty and smelly troops who needed shaves and haircuts we couldn't eat in his Chu Lai Mess Hall... :D
The Revolution was a long time ago, so was the Civil War which had the same 'contractor' problems. In fact, all wars seem to have contractor problems. The mostly Korean and Japaneses contractors in Korea were crooked and bore a lot of watching; the Consortium RMK-BRJ in Viet Nam got wealthy (the BR being then Brown and Root, now part of KBR. BR in the day were friends of Lyndon...). I suspect it's a human frailty problem and there's no fixing it, just a lot of watching.
My belief is that contracting is probably going to be with us absent a return to the draft (to which I am very strongly opposed) and that aside from the services getting a lot smarter about it -- and eliminating a lot of the Congressionally imposed bureaucracy involved in the contracting process as well as continuing Congressional influence in that process (NOTE: Which has a whole lot to do with the apparent DoD willingness to 'overlook' possible chicanery...) -- it seems to me that design of structure and equipment should be undertaken in the future with elimination of as much contract support as possible as an essential goal.
Consider also that the wants and needs of armed forces in peacetime and those in wartime differ considerably. The US has effectively been at peace since 1945 -- parts of the services have been to war many times since and are there now but Congress and the Pentagon have not been at war in a long time...
No easy solutions to this one...