What you are all failing to consider ...
... is that the transition to contractors was driven by authorized end strength, the Congressional limit on the number of people in the active duty components.
The authorized end strength of the Army is 512,400 (authorized for 2009). The Army wants to get maximum combat power out of that number. The brass has decided (correctly, in my opinion) to identify areas where they can hire civilians to perform certain activities, and free up another troop slot for combat power.
That is the reason every company doesn't have its own mess section. Its the reason so much of the higher echelon maintenance/repair is performed by contractors. It's the reason a lot of the logistics (i.e. transport) is done by contractors. Having contractors do a lot of that work frees authorized slots for combat power.
A second consideration is pay. As an exampole, the Navy's electronics tech schools are (or at least used to be) the best to be found anywhere, military or civilian. They last(ed) about 18 months. Add 36 months for service in a unit, and the sailor is at the end of his enlistment. At which point, he can get a job at SCI Sanmina, Rockwell-Collins, Harris, etc. at two or three times the pay, company paid education to get a BS EE, etc. At this point, the Navy has exactly one avenue to pursue if it wants to retain the expertise: go to the contractor and pay them for the work.
Jill, a lot of your points and ideas are very well taken. But the problem isn't with what the services want. The problem is with the constraints imposed by Congress.
Tom, I don't quite understand
what you are driving at in your third trend:
"A third but somewhat buried trend in all of this dealt with breaking with the Weinburger/Powell/Myers changes to the military that required full mobilization of reserves and NG. Giving those functions over to private companies reduced societal and political costs (in theory). This dovetailed nicely with transformational rhetoric about the intrinsic value of rapid deployment, none of which took into account the costs of an extended war effort."
Tom[/QUOTE]
One of the consequences of both the Gulf War decision to call up RC personnel using derivative UICs and the subsequent Rumsfeld understaffed Army was to require the call up of all sorts of RC (USAR and NG) units - CA, CS, and CSS for multiple tours well beyond what they thought they were signing up for. Can you clarify?;)
Cheers
JohnT