PMCs could conduct training on weapons, tactics and the operation and maintenance of equipment at Afghan military installations, but I doubt that they could accompany Afghan units during field operations or function as a de facto chain of command in the field. When contractors are participants in military operations it introduces a new organizational interface, with the military and its civil servants on one side and the contractors on the other. Sometimes when a contractor does what needs to be done to accomplish the mission it can create awkward situations after the fact if each action they take has not been explicity requested in writing by a contracting officer or his representatives.
In 1998 I attended a preproposal briefing conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Transatlantic Branch for the Balkans peacekeeping force support contact--Brown & Root was the incumbent and they also won the recompete. The contracting officer, a retired USAF O-5 from HQ, U.S. Army Europe in Heidelburg, told us we were not to fulfill any request for support unless it had been authorized by him or his subordinates in writing. He said division commanders and their staffs would periodically visit their brigades deployed overseas and tell contractors verbally to do various things--put linoleum on the floor of a dining facility or to pave a parking lot, things like that--thereby driving costs through the roof. Officers had no authority over contractors, he said; only contracting officers and their designated representatives did. You can imagine the resentment that policy caused at the grass-roots working level. "I'm in the Army, you're a contractor, and I just told you what to do. Don't give me any double-talk. Am I making myself clear?"
I worked in DoD support contracting as a technical writer in the DC area for 16 years. As I see it, DoD only likes contractors at the colonel and above level because they provide a quick augmentation to their work forces. At the worker-bee level, most military personnel and DoD civilians despise contactors and regard them as being overpaid rip-off artists.
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