Contractors Doing Combat Service Support is a Bad, Bad Idea

[Uboat509]

As for the FOB dining system, there has historically been morale issues between the line and the rear elements, in terms of what each gets vs. what each does. Be aware of that.

Bitching about the REMFs is a cherished, time honored CA tradition. It has been going on as long as there have been REMFs. The guys who do the fighting are always going to complain about the guys who do the supporting, no matter what. It is not going to go away. I can remember being in the field as a young soldier and complaining because we thought that the REMFs were keeping the "good" t-rats and giving us the bad ones (in retrospect I have no idea what the difference between a good and a bad t-rat is). There is an old saying in the Army, "If joe ain't bitchin', joe ain't happy."

Furthermore, to the extent that contractors take care of the food, you will always have a problem supporting those who are in dangerous locations. Getting food to the guys on the front line is always going to be perilous. Who is more likely to take on that responsibility -- contractors or other soldiers/Marines?

Can you point to any circumstance when a front line guys didn't eat because of contractors? I don't know about the Marines but there are plenty of Army log convoys traveling all over Iraq. If there is a place where the contractors won't go because it is too dangerous then we have military log guys to carry supply to those areas. Just because we have contractors carrying a lot of the stuff does not mean that our log don't carry any. Presumably it is the same with the Marines.

No, that's not what I have said. I have argued that the priority should start with the line folks, with those outside the wire and work backwards. If you can only manage to get the guys in peril one hot meal a day, don't go overboard with those behind the lines.

As Cav pointed out we are generally supporting the frontline guys as well as circumstances and a facilities allow. Some of the COPs I have been on don't have enough room for a decent sized latrine, never mind an MKT and a mess section.

I think it bears considering whether troops might not be better suited to the tasks, particularly as you get closer to the fight. How you want to fill those billets creates another set of questions.

As I stated above, troops are still doing this. Contractors have augmented but not replaced troops, with some exceptions.


As per SOP Ken cuts to the heart of the whole argument.

Seems to me to be a lot of "If I were God..." and that valid points made by folks who were there are sort of overlooked. The most egregious overlooking being in the area of how (to include methods and times), even if you dispense with contractors and the troops do the CSS jobs, you are going to feed the guys outside the wire in the COPs the same meals you are able to feed in the base camps. That doesn't even get into how you're going to retain, in a volunteer force, those Fobbits and / or REMFs if you forced them to eat like the line guys.

No one has yet come up with a viable alternative that will meet the needs and goals of the nation, the army -- or of today's troops who are very emphatically not Spartans, Roman Legionaires, Revolutionary Continentals or even post Civil War troopies. I'll wait for that.

SFC W