We will be carrying out more PMC(Private military Company) contracts, and the PMCs will continue to expand, grow and soon enough take on more Military Operations. Using own our armed forces will only backfire and we have seen evidence of this with the rise of ISIL. As more and more jihads become militarized with an image of a burning jollyroger in their eyes we will have to do something to prevent these individuals from one wanting to kill us and two having this perspective of an opposing force. There are many things that can be said about the Muslim culture but one thing needs to be understood and that’s they are human beings who will act like human beings they aren’t special and neither are we. The only realistic measures to be taken are increasing media support of PMCs and withdrawing use of American soldiers.
I shouldn’t have to mention this but I will, most soldiers are expected to come home to their familys, their familys are expecting them mentally and emotionally to come home. You aren’t suppose to leave American soldiers on their own to die because things fucked up. Also I’m not trying to say we should instantly replace all military operations with PMC contracts im not an idiot. I just want to bring up a very critical subject that has been going on and will continue.
Why would these Mercenary Companies be willing to die for their paymasters ?
OK, we all remember Sir John Hawkwood, but by the end of the Italian Wars, mercenaries were stopping and starting, bargaining for more money and then getting it from the enemy instead. And being a damned nuisance in many other ways.
And who will pay for and supply them with needed ultra-modern weaponry etc. ? Governments prefer private corporations aren’t authorized to use bombs and missiles. One may be better off waiting for battle-bots, which America can afford and ISIS cannot.
Mercenaries were also a contributing factor in the fall of Rome as well. It’s pretty clear at least that Mercs need to be less powerful than the standing army, or else bad things will happen.
I also can’t believe the username Barack Obama wasn’t taken already.
If you leave your mercenaries behind to die, you’re going to find it a lot harder to hire mercenaries in the future.
Mercenaries typically expect safe duty, and are not interested in dying for their employer. And it’s nonsensical to think that if ISIS were fighting American-paid mercenaries rather than American regular soldiers they’d stop being mad at the United States. They’re perfectly able to follow the money, they know who would be pulling the strings.
Mercenaries have a terrible reputation because the interests of a mercenary company and the interests of their employers are radically different.
If your mercenaries are mostly former American military who are doing the same job as before, only for more money, why spend the extra money? Do we like handing out extra money? It seems to me that many uses of contractors in Iraq literally was to hand out extra money. Why send regular soldiers when you can hire private contractors at ten times the price?
Or if your mercenaries are third world Hessian-style mercenaries, then they’re not exactly going to be up to the standards of a modern regular army. Yes, we could hire units from Yemen or Egypt, but are those guys actually going to do any fighting? Notice how the Iraq army that we lavishly equipped and trained and paid faded away mostly without firing a shot.
If we’re tired of American boys coming home in boxes, then maybe we should realize that maybe there are some wars that we don’t need to get involved in.
Private military companys already have the arms they need, that’s why they are cheaper than using actual military force. With government and public backing blackwater we could definetly ultra-modernize their equipment. And uh, I don’t think waiting for those battle-bots is going to be enough, we have to do something now not wait for technology.
Irrelevant in this case, by PMCs we specifically mean Academi and you do have a very valid point but that is going to become an entirelly different debate. Also if the PMCs become more popular than the US army then perhaps we could use PMCs entirelly for our armed forces instead of our own army, instead we could use them to protect. We don’t need American Troops over seas shooting babys and the mother wants to blame America for her child’s death. It’s sad to say this but it’s better if it’s some guy in a baseball cap, than an American soldier and im sure you understand why.
Private contractors are actually less expensive in the long run than sending out all of your armed forces to invade like we did with the gulf war because you don’t have to worry about the equipment or supplys as the contractors handle all of that.
The people we hire do not join PMCs for money, In most cases they are Americans as you said and former military. For us, for Academi you don’t join just to become cowboy gunslingers making thousands of dollars of escort contracts. They are highly professional dedicated individuals who seek to be apart of something larger than them selfs. Most, are like this and I can confirm than from the people I’ve met at Academi. They understand they can and may die, and if something goes terribly wrong they will accept and understand they will not be saved to prevent further known casualties.
I wouldn’t trust someone with the spelling and grammar skills of the OP to operate modern military equipment, or a slingshot for that matter, much less propose future military policy for the country.
It has to be paid for one way or the other. Private contractors, as a for-profit entity, are simply going to build the cost of the arms and supplies into the price of the contract.
I can’t think of a better way to disengage the American public from their moral responsibilities towards whom they wage war. “Even if you could prove those gawdawful things happened, it’s not our fault-it’s the fault of those companies!”
How many M1 Abrams tanks does Blackwater–I mean “Academi” own?
No, I don’t understand why. Iraqis shot by American mercenaries are easily able to understand they were shot by Americans. If a bunch of guys from Iran were roaming around America shooting people do you think Americans would care if they were regular Iranian army units, or just mercenaries from Iran who were hired, trained, and equipped by Iran and sent over to America to shoot people by the Iranian government? Or do you think Americans would understand that these Iranian guys from Iran that Iran sent over here were Iranian guys sent by Iran?
Yes, except for the part that if you want to hire mercenaries with their own equipment, then it costs more than hiring a bunch of guys in t-shirts. If we didn’t already have a gigantic lavishly equipped military then it might be cheaper to hire guys who already have their own equipment rather than start from scratch. But we do, so it isn’t.
And it turns out that in actual fact the contractors we hired in Iraq were incredibly expensive compared to government workers. We had certain elements in the Bush administration that had both an ideological conviction that free enterprise would always be cheaper than public services, and a private interest in those very same free enterprise solutions. And so billions and billions and billions of the American taxpayer’s money went to Dick Cheney’s buddies.
If they wanted to be a part of something larger than themselves, why didn’t they stay in the US military? And the answer is that they can make a lot more money for doing pretty much the same sort of work as a private contractor. Now the question is, if they make a lot more money as a contractor doing the same work they did when they were in the US military, how is it cheaper for us taxpayers?
Of course it is ridiculous to claim that mercenaries will be treated as expendable. Even if the regular army commanders they work for treat them as expendable, the mercenary units won’t treat themselves as expendable. If you order PFC Johnson to act as rear guard so the rest of the unit can evacuate, then PFC Johnson has to obey that order or face the UCMJ. If you order a private contractor to stay behind as rear guard he’s going to ask where in the contract it says a giraffe can’t play third base.
Actually, South African mercenaries apparently have attack helicopters. There are some jet fighters in private possession as well. Besides, the PMC’s can buy their own equipment; their main problem is finding people willing to sell it to them. If, as a country we decide to transition to greater use of private contractors, we wouldn’t have any trouble getting them the equipment they need. That said, I don’t think this is a good idea for reasons stated above. There’s also the problem that mercenaries are illegal under one of the Geneva Conventions are treated similarly to terrorists and spies.
OP: are you an operator or looking to become one? Just curious.
Who will logistically support them? IOW, how will they get their privately owned tanks and planes and attack helicopters to and from the battlefield and how will they support them once there? The answer, of course, is they won’t be able to do that on their own either, and would have to rely on the US to do all of that for them as part of the contract. Which is why the OPs proposal is so silly. Oh, sure, you could have some light mercenary troops doing things like security (which is what the US does now), but no way could you get any sort of credible force to fight in theater against someone like ISIS/ISIL in any sort of numbers.
Even if you had mercenary companies that had more capabilities than most modern nation states do (which is ridiculous in itself), it wouldn’t solve anything for the US to employ them over employing our own forces. It would cost the world, we’d get no PR type slack (nor should we) and most likely the mercs we employed would be in all ways less effective, less motivated and a hell of a lot more destructive and out of control. We’d still have to do all of the water carrying to support and supply them exactly like we have to do with our own troops and in most cases the troops of our allies so I’m not seeing any upside and a hell of a lot of downsides to all of this.
So, the answer of ‘When will the United States replace Soldiers with PMCs’ is pretty much ‘never’ except in very narrow, vertical cases such as to provide security (or, more likely, to make and serve the food or do the other non-shooter jobs the military needs to do but doesn’t have the bodies or desire to do themselves :p).
The core problem with PMCs is that their business model gives them a pretty good incentive to perpetuate wars rather than end them. Also turning to banditism if/when their funding ends, deals with the enemy, taking over the Republic… I can see a few downsides with the plan, is what I’m saying.
[QUOTE=Barack Obama]
Private contractors are actually less expensive in the long run than sending out all of your armed forces to invade like we did with the gulf war because you don’t have to worry about the equipment or supplys as the contractors handle all of that.
[/QUOTE]
You do realize that they include all that in their bill, right ? If you require them to have a goddamn air wing they’ll make you pay for the training, acquirement and maintenance of said goddamn air wing. Ain’t no such thing as a free military campaign.