Trump and the Return of Private Military Contractors
The PMSC sector is the U.S. military’s American Express card; it dare not deploy without it. Or, to use a more morbid pop culture reference, consider the first Alien movie, when they try to remove the facehugger from a crewman’s face, only to realize that trying to do so would kill the patient. The PMSC sector is now so intertwined with the service and support components of the U.S. military that the U.S. military would have to be rebuilt from scratch in order to do without it.
Phi Beta Iota: It is a fact that we have a hollow US military that is 50% and most of that waste revolves around the toxic mix of contractors on the one hand and a completely out of control defense acquisition system that produces such monstrocities as the F-35 and the USS Gerald Ford (as well as an Army that is out-gunned, out-tracked, and out-surveilled by anyone using Chinese or Russian capabilities). The US Army is a one million soldier Army that fronts for three to six million contractors that costs twice to three times what they should and deliver a third of the value of a properly trained, equipped, and led US soldier. It is also a fact that it will take ten years from today to get to where we have a US military that can achieve global reach, with precision, while avoiding the expense and the political baggage of overseas basing — as long as our Army is based in South Korea, Germany, and Japan — and many other countries worldwide — it is their Army, not ours. The time has come to bring our Army home, and to rebuild our Army, from scratch, without contractors.
See Especially (Free Online):
Robert Steele: Re-Inventing the US Army
- Steele, Robert. Reinventing the US Army Part I – An American Grand Strategy, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, Formal Publication 2017
- Steele, Robert. Reinventing the US Army Part II – Overview of Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary Army Operations, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, Formal Publication 2017.
- Steele, Robert. Reinventing the US Army Part III – Strategy, Reality, Precepts, Structure, & Leadership, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, Formal Publication 2017.
