Contractors Doing Combat Service Support is a Bad, Bad Idea

[Ken White]

I'm not sure if it's such a good idea, this reliance on contracting for government services, and if there is a positive effective on retention, I don't think it ultimately makes up for the negative effects in so many other areas.

Wouldn't that depend on the numbers?

I remember when the contracting craze got underway in earnest, back in the early 90s.

Actually, it started in the mid 70s as a result of the cessation of the Draft.

... giving defense industry great influence and leverage over the formulation and execution of defense policy, and today, I think the department is in a bad shape due to that.

Interesting. in what way do you see them influencing policy (other than in the retirees who work for contractors or the contractors who get appointed to defense positions, something that's been happening since WW II).

I have personally witnessed a dispute between my command and a service that shall remain nameless, where government interest was subverted and a corporate agenda was pushed in the place of legitimate military needs. ... One example of defense contractor shenanigans among many I have witnessed.

Stuff like that happens. I have also seen turf battles between commands (and services..) that got worse than that -- and everyone involved was wearing a war suit.

I think things started going wrong when contractors shifted from being only providers of equipment to performing services. Performing services makes you a part of the chain of command, full stop; but unlike military/ government members of that chain, companies have a second set of loyalties, that their company's own bottom line. Thus it is impossible to have unity of command, or assurance that your private sector subordinates will do what the boss commands, unless the corporate folks abide by an ethic that the bottom line takes a back seat to the good of the government where those two collide. Example above and from Jill's post demonstrate that is not the case, nor have I ever heard of that happening anywhere else. Conflicts of interest are built in to this.

The US government is one massive conflict of interest -- look at the FAA or the Department of Agriculture; any of them. Life is a conflict of interest. The Company has no loyalty to the government or to the chain of command; their only loyalty is to their bottom line, period. Any contract written without that thoughy firmly in mind will leave loopholes that corporate lawyers will find and wiggle through. Sorry, but to me, that's human nature at work, to be expected (not desired, not nice but expected) and part of the way things work. Better contracts and fewer changes can stop that.

Over-reliance on contractors to do government business can also lead to a loss of control of government functions, again like the unnamed service no longer really being in control of their training network, and the Army's CSS support cited in the original article. Costs get out of hand - I think that almost goes without saying now, looking at endemic contract cost overruns, and
money.

Unfortunately I don't see this changing much - too many in politics are beneficiaries of the status quo.

(Of course, I caveat all this with "I have nothing against contractor employees - I used to be one - just some of their corporate masters." Don't want anyone to take this as a slam against the worker bees)

While I don't dispute that the system is far from perfect and that there's graft and corruption in it; I gotta ask Old Eagle's question; Bearing my subject line in mind, what's your solution?

[Stevely]

The US government is one massive conflict of interest -- look at the FAA or the Department of Agriculture; any of them. Life is a conflict of interest. The Company has no loyalty to the government or to the chain of command; their only loyalty is to their bottom line, period. Any contract written without that thoughy firmly in mind will leave loopholes that corporate lawyers will find and wiggle through. Sorry, but to me, that's human nature at work, to be expected (not desired, not nice but expected) and part of the way things work. Better contracts and fewer changes can stop that.

I don't have a problem in principle with the way businesses work in trying for government contracts, but I think it is a problem when contractors are integrated into the government workforce. You get personnel who serve two masters in one organization, and that's trouble.

You could mitigate some problems with more careful contract writing, but there are a lot of problems with that, I think. Contracted workforce is now pretty common throughout the department, so we're going need probably more lawyers than what we have currently, or rely less on them, or allow contracts with very broad statements of work. Where I work, we've got close to 1000 contractors, who have all been unified under one big contract. We (my boss and me and his other minions) spent the better part of a year combing through the task order to ensure that we closed all the little loopholes, but we still get conflicts over "that's not in the task order, so pay us more or go away." We have a big and technically diverse mission, you really just can't cover it all and I don't believe we could write a foolproof contract to cover the mission, if we have specify all the things the contractor must do (and we do). Squabbles with the contract over what is legitimate work are common here, and depressing.

This is not good in a COCOM HQ, would be much worse out in the field. Do we want contractors parsing their statement of work on the battlefield? I think the obvious solution is that we need more troops, then we wouldn't have a need to push contractors out to do jobs that have traditionally been done by soldiers, or reduce our commitments to the level that can be supported by the numbers we have in uniform. Failing that, fill the billets with GS (make that NSPS) personnel.

Past my few suggestions, I don't have any schemes to solve this current impasse. Though if I do find some clever solution to it all, I will start my own consultancy and go hunting contracts to sell my wisdom to Uncle Sam.