Reader Graeme asks:
Do other nations outsource their military support operations to such as Halliburton and KBR? If so, do they pay as much? What is the war in Iraq costing by comparison to erstwhile engagements when troops mostly did their own KP? Are we getting a deal, or is this privatized arrangement as much of a rip-off as it seems?
1. This would only be a useful question if other nations had anything the United States would recognize as a military. No other country in the developed world can project force much beyond their borders without US transport and logistical support, which is the sort of thing KBR provides. They "outsource" to us.
2. The modern military costs more because we've subsituted expensive capital for cheap labor. We lose a lot fewer people, and a lot more (in dollar value) equipment. This seems like a good tradeoff to me.
3. I don't have any way of assessing whether Halliburton's prices are reasonable. But keep in mind that such arrangements often make non-cash economic costs explicit, which makes them seem more expensive.
But keep in mind that such arrangements often make non-cash economic costs explicit, which makes them seem more expensive.
What would we have to pay (in salaries, or enlistment bonuses, or whatever) to get enough soldiers to do the KBR jobs? What are the economic costs of a draft for that purpose?
Tricky questions to answer.
"No other country in the developed world can project force much beyond their borders without US transport and logistical support"
So I must have imagined both the retaking of the Falkland Islands and the UK intervention in Sierra Leone?
Granted no one else has the logistic capacity of the US military and the number of countries able to project force elsewhere in the workl is small but that's not quite the same as "no other country".
The draft wouldn't be needed to support KP functions, just as it wasn't needed in the 1970's after the AVF (All Volunteer Force) went into effect.
It's a big political game--end strength, that is--that is played by Congress and the President. Congress controls the purse strings. during the Carter era, Congress wanted to decrease the size of the military, and Carter went along with that. But in order to reach the size of the cuts Congress wanted without entirely destroying the military, cuts were made in the length of training programs (boot camps) and in the normal T/O (Table of Organization) of line units.
The problem is that the KP functions were performed by the trainees in boot camps and the regular forces at the other bases, on a one-week-at-a-time assigned basis. Reducing the end strengths was done partly by hiring civilians to do the KP functions, thus freeing up the weeks that trainees and regular forces used to be spending doing KP. Cutting the KP weeks meant that fewer active duty forces needed to be maintained, without sacrificing military readiness.
Whether or not the military saved any money doing this, I have no idea. But the idea wasn't to save money; it was to placate Congress who wanted fewer troops in uniform because the war in Vietnam was over and darn it! the world was obviously becoming a less dangerous place.
Except that we Marines knew differently. Something happens when you learn Marine Corps history, when you learn that the Corps has been involved to some degree or other in a shooting war (even if undeclared), on a regular basis. Ever since this country was founded in 1776, there has not been a 10 year straight period without the Marines being involved in a shooting war of some sort. I imagine the other services can make similar claims.
And things haven't changed.
There's a very nice thing about contractors: When the war goes away, so do the contractors.
I used to be a big fan of 'outsourcing' or 'privatizing' military support functions. It is still appropriate in some cases, but I am increasingly wary of rushing in to such deals.
The main tradeoff is not so much cost per se, but flexibility. As an example, some (most?) of naval ordnance pierside handling operations have been contracted out. Now, this is indeed cheaper on an hourly basis - as long as you handle weapons 0800-1400. But once some piece of equipment breaks, or you have a schedule shift so that you can't start until 1200 (so you won't be finished until 1700) it either becomes frightfully expensive because of overtime - or unable to be done at all due to lack of manpower.
"So I must have imagined both the retaking of the Falkland Islands and the UK intervention in Sierra Leone?"
You must be talking about the Falklands War in 1982, because I can't think of anything else that happened there that would fit your description.
Let me repeat myself: the invasion occurred in 1982. That is 26 years ago, right? More than a quarter of a century?
Our own military was in pretty bad shape by the end of the Vietnam War, mainly due to cultural influences. Drug use was rampant. Racial tensions were high. Some commanders at bases in the US even resorted to prizes for units that had a complete roll call after a weekend because soldiers going AWOL were so prevalent.
None of these problems exist now. So much time has passed since we experienced them (30 years) that I have even come across people who are serving now who cannot believe that it was ever that bad.
The point being that looking at the military capabilities of a country three decades ago, and assuming that nothing has changed, is risible.
So far as the Sierra Leone operation is concerned, Britain never committed more than about 1500 troops in all, and about one third of those were held in close reserve. (It was called Operation Palliser, if you would care to look it up.)
I don't want to downplay their effort, or take anything away from what the British accomplished under difficult conditions, but that is a drop in the bucket compared to US capabilities.
James
The British Sierra Leone intervention was only some six years ago. France has intervened directly in any number of African countries, some quite recently. Even Russia, after about 1.5 decades as a basket case, has resumed long distance bomber runs near the UK and Alaska -- Charlie Whiskey stylie. McCardle is right that the sheer scale of US military power dwarfs other countries' but they are still able to project power.
And yes, the British are famous for Quango-ish and murky dealings with mercenary-like enterprises. See Mark Thatcher (Margaret's son).
As a fomer contractor, I can say that most contracts I knew of were 'cost plus' -- i.e. not fixed bid, we got more if we spent more. The control is usually an ACO -- army contracting officer -- attached to the operation to keep tabs. I don't really know how effective or not they are in general. Ours did manage to keep more egregious spending (expense account and transportation type stuff) from getting out of control. But that didn't really go to the heart of what we were charging for the service provided.
One thing to be said for contractors/mercenaries is they don't carry the baggage that a 'service member' carries. The US military is an essentially socialist enterprise -- socialist housing, healthcare, even shopping , it provides for dependents. Contractors don't typically do that. They pay more in salary for someone doing the identical job, but don't pay the extra freight. That's why a lot of single soldiers/sailors/marines will get out to work for a contractor, but guys with families stay in.
I can tell you that in Kandahar in 2006, I was being Relieved in Place (we call it ripping) by Canadians and the Dutch. KBR, Haliburton, DRS, the whole show was still there. They were working on their vehicles, their radios, and their weapons. So yes other militaries do outsource their logistics. As for how much they pay, well I'm sure some group in their country has those numbers memorized.
People shouldn't take much issue with this. If your surprised that guys chase bigger money into the civilian sector, then like most of the civilian population of the US you don't understand that if you exclude benefits soldiers don't make much money. I made 25,000 dollars deployed in Afghanistan from 05-06. Most of that came from the fact that I did not pay taxes and I was stationed in Europe where you get additional pay to make up for the difference in the currency and the tax system (which carries over to the deployment).
Artur is right, your medical, your housing, and yes your food, are all stipends or taken care of for you. If your an 18 year old brand new private you live in a barracks room (no rent). You eat at what amounts to a restaurant that you pay once a month (automatically, and I've never seen someone who lives in the barracks not pay, ever). If you have a car you take out your insurance, probably a car payment as well. So for disposable income you don't have much. Why doesn't the Army just pay soldiers more and trim all this away you may ask? It could do some of that, but well if you want to know more you should look into it yourself.
Other countries have militaries, but they don't have things like large fleets of aircraft carriers. As far as I know, every French operation of any size relies on United States assets for transport and resupply; ditto the British, though to a lesser extent.
I think artur gets to the heart of it above when he says that the "military is an essentially socialist enterprise"--it's an extremely weird animal, in ways both large and small.
It can be cheaper in a lot of non-combat jobs to use contractors not only because of the non-obvious costs that artur mentioned, but because the particular mentality with which the military approches the world can have a lot of inefficiency compared to civilian companies.
For example, as ben mentioned above, junior enlisted are required to live in the barracks. Unless they are married. Every so often, you will see a Soldier get married for almost the sole purpose of moving out of the barracks. Now, civilians do stupid things as well, but most of the stupid things that you could in your personal life are not your boss's problem too. When the new wife of our young Private bounces a check at the PX (an on-post department store), they send a letter to his company and his chain of command gets involved.
Similarly, everybody is required to get a safety briefing before they are released for the weekend. It basically consists of "have safe sex, and don't drink and drive." If you didn't get this briefing before the weekend and you get nailed for drunk driving, your boss can get into trouble.
This type of worldview adds up to a lot of time spent dealing with people's personal problems. Private firms would simply fire somebody who was taking up more time than he contributes. However, to get thrown out of the military, you literally need to commit a crime--a lot of people say that about their companies, but in the Army only an actual, honest-to-God court(-martial) can fire somebody, and only after that crime has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
And it should be this way. All this stuff is a derivative of command responsibility--you are responsible for what your unit does or fails to do. You do not want a military that doesn't view the world this way. But it definitely results in a lot of dealing with the personal problems of your subordinates, to a degree that would be unheard of in the civilian world. But it does mean that it may be more cost-effective to pay a private company to do a lot of non-combat tasks, even if the people who do it are paid a lot more in salary.
I would say that but their overall size makes me think that it doesn't require much to sustain them. I suspect they are supported or would be by some kind of merchant fleet. They wouldn't need big air support either. There are a ton of Cargo aircraft in the world. The French mirage is a more than useful Close air support platform. Anyway this is hypothetical. For the most part they do not engage in any kind of military intervention without aid from others. Usually imposing what they need on the Defense Logistics Systems of the US. Until demonstrated otherwise they are reliant on US transport ability.
I'd have to disagree with you on a lot of these issues Cat. Is the US military a socialist system. Only in the sense that it never broke away from the basic system that began with Sparta! Its pay system is such that serious refinements ought to be made. For one, as you said, the fact you cannot fire anyone without a ridiculously lengthy paperwork process is a bad thing. Numbers matter I get that, but keeping the kid that pulls the pin on a grenade, replaces the pin with a nail, and then duck tapes and hides it from everyone, only to be found 3 weeks later by a guy coming back from the R&R break. That kid ought to be flown out of country in two weeks and no longer employed by the US government in one month.
We could debate the economic thoughtfulness of the US military forever, but it needs change. The current system is not adequate or smart. There is a financial incentive to get married too young. The army has had to lower its standards for the simple fact it does not have enough incentives to attract and keep (ie junior officers and mid-career Non commisioned officers)talent. Soldiers who deploy mulitple times receive the exact same pay as someone who sits at a desk in Hawaii. And the overall reason I hear for this sounds more like an excuse. I'll paraphrase the argument: "Soldiers signed up to do this job, rewarding someone for doing their job is wrong regardless of how well they're doing it, we don't want to create a mercenary military." Market forces drive the price of talent. This line of thought is just that, it only makes sense if you hold to certain ideals about service and its value. These ideals are not held by the public at large, though they are respected the underlying truth is serving your country from a market perspective is absolutely disadvantageous for the private and the general. More can be done so that at least people don't look at the military as a giant financial blow from start to finish. Because in that respect the military has no argument against. It immediately turns into "you don't do this for the money." Yeah but (whisper) the dirty secret is money matters and when your 70 and retired money will mean the difference between living on your own and living in a taxpayer funded "old soldier's home."
ben--
Compared to the rest of American society, the military has a socialist bent. I mean socialist in the sense of a collective mentality, not in the "hoist the red hammer-and-sickle flag" sense. The political leanings definitely run to the right. As an aside, I've been puzzled by the few leftist anti-war activists who seem to be arguing for what amounts to mutiny by the Services in opposition to Iraq. If the military were inclined to start doing its own thing despite the wishes of the civilian government, they might be happy for as long as it takes to get Bush out, but they probably wouldn't like what would happen to them immediately after that.
No argument that the current system has a bunch of problems. I can think of quite a few people that need to be doing some other job that doesn't require handling automatic weapons. Reforming the system will run into two basic facts: (1) Being a Soldier is a government job, with all the attendant bureacracy in discipline that entails (2) It's a massive organization with an extremely rigid hierarchy and the attendant possiblity for abuse by someone with a vendetta against a subordinate (the first problem is largely a result of the second)
The problem with trying to liberalize the system for discharging incompetent Soldiers can actually be illustrated by your example. My first thought after reading your (horrifying) anecdote about replacing the pin in a frag grenade with a nail was, "Where the hell were that kid's leaders? What kind of PCCs/PCIs were they doing that they didn't notice that he was missing a grenade for three weeks?" Of course, upon further reflection, there are any number of ways that he could have procured a grenade on the side and still had his basic issue.
Even on this specific instance, you will have to go into great detail with senior leadership to convince them that that guy needs to go--that it's an individual problem and that poor weapons discipline is not a systemic problem within the squad/platoon/company. (Even experts can become complacent about very dangerous ordnance when things have been going well for a while. In OBC, they told us of some EOD guys that got killed while clearing a cluster bomb strike. When they first started, they were doing the right thing by destroying each individual bomblet in place, or moving them one at a time with the required safety distance between each individual team member. After a few weeks, they were grabbing them by the handful and colocating them for disposal, and several of team members were standing very close together when one went off.)
This is exacerbated by the "field-grade lobotomy." Most officers look back with great nostalgia on their time as a platoon leader, and probably forget about some of the jackassery that they had to deal with. As a consequence, they are likely to insist on extensive counseling packets before giving someone the boot; i.e., a single instance like this is not likely to convince a lieutenant colonel that that guy is beyond rehabilitation. (To be fair, he may be right. Some colossal screw-ups can become good Soldiers with individual attention. Of course, most don't. But you generally owe it to them to try.)
As to getting and retaining better people--salaries need to come up to be more competitive. Write your Congressman. Getting the numbers can definitely be done, seeing as the Army used to be 3x it's current size, on a smaller population base. But I don't see the government ponying up the dough to do that. (We used to spend a much larger percentage of GDP on the DoD in the 80s)
The KBR, et.al. contracts were put into place in the 90s to save money. They are IDIQ contracts (Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity) that allow the government to rapidly surge capabilities. They are usually a list of jobs that can be done, the accounting rules to be used, the paperwork trail to be produced, and a set of rates. As others have pointed out, they tend to be cost + award fee contracts. Then, whenever the DoD needs 100 truck drivers to haul supplies from point a to point b, they call up the contractor and tell them the job to do. They are very common for service and support functions, not just in DoD but other agencies. They are used in industry also so that a company doesn't have to venture outside core expertise. (i.e. why should an oil company run living quarters for workers in remote areas? Hire it out.)
I know that KBR has been recruiting truck drivers locally and offering $100k+ salaries. Of course, the working conditions suck and you might get shot at, but the money (some of which is tax sheltered) is great.
Another point, speaking as a former enlisted man, is that telling prospective recruits that are signing up for say air traffic control or the military police that they will spend one quarter of their time washing dishes, could be a deal breaker.
The horrifying anecdote was performed by a SSG team leader I had while my old LRS unit still existed. So that should answer the where were the PCI/PCC's question. In case your wondering he is still in the Army and may be a SFC by now. As to his overall performance, when he left the team quickly after this incident we put together a board with all the moronic things he said and did. So it was hardly an isolated incompetent act.
Ok, why is the approval authority a man that will not even see the soldier on a daily basis? This ought to be a Company commander decision. Nowadays the approval authority to separate a soldier is a Special Courts Martial.
Is the military socialist? I say no, only because the military structure predates the conception of socialism as an articulated form. Its a chicken before the egg argument. It exists because of what I would call a perceived necessity. Not because someone said socialist ideology is good for the military. The importance of this difference I'll try to articulate now. In the first instance it would be something that is changeable because people naturally look to enhance efficiency. In the second instance it would be part of the institution, and much harder to change
No disagreement about a significant bend to have soldiers basically mutiny. However, when 10 generals have epiphanies all at once in 2006, maybe they should have left before march 2003 to actually have an effect. Bottom line is they played along and bit the hook. I have no problem of calling that ineptitude.
Pay in the 80's is worse than it is now. You can spend a lot of GDP but there is only so much that can and should be spent on the Military. If we were to peg it at 5% of GDP I think that would be fair. But all you have to do is look at the Army FCS program to see how poorly it is spent. Its 200 billion dollars of crap. Which, by the way, the new MRAP is not a part of. This is not industry driven, this can only be justified by juvenility, a Major shouldn't be developing new technology for the on the ground foot soldier
isolanthe - re:
"No other country in the developed world can project force much beyond their borders without US transport and logistical support"
So I must have imagined both the retaking of the Falkland Islands and the UK intervention in Sierra Leone?
A better way to put it is that no other country can project and sustain a large force well outside their borders without some form of American support, or at least that its very difficult for them to do so.
Sierra Leone, didn't involve a very significant force. The Falkland Islands didn't sustain a large force for a longer period of time. You had a somewhat large force, for a fairly short time, then a much smaller force for an extended time to provide a defense for the islands.
But if its a small force, or if it doesn't have to be sustained for long, than countries like the UK, and France can do it.
ben - re: Is the military socialist? I say no, only because the military structure predates the conception of socialism as an articulated form.
I don't see how your conclusion follows from the premise. Socialism can exist before its defined and before theories about it can be created.
There is an alternative to the Field Grade Lobotomy. One simply takes a huge section of intestines out and replaces it with a plexiglass window, so that you can continue to see with your head up your a$$.
When you make light colonel, they take a can of black spray paint and spray the window.
Like I said it is a chicken or the egg argument. Don't get me wrong, gravity existed before Newton. However, unlike gravity, socialism is an ideal. For the military, socialism is a method. The ideal part has never had a bearing. The structures in the military were created not for the ideal of socialism, but because it seemed the optimal way to establish accountability, respect, safety, etc. Thats why I am loathe to call the military a socialist institution. It does not have to be so. Methods are easily replaced, or updated Ideas remain the same through time their applications being the only difference.
Its not really a chicken and egg argument. It doesn't primarily seem to be a "which came first" argument. More an issue about how to properly define socialism, or "a socialist system".
However, unlike gravity, socialism is an ideal. For the military, socialism is a method. The ideal part has never had a bearing. The structures in the military were created not for the ideal of socialism, but because it seemed the optimal way to establish accountability, respect, safety, etc.
Its a socialist system (or to use your terminology its a system that uses socialist methods) that usually does not work under a socialist ideal, and often has members who while they work in and get support from a socialist system are less prone to support the expansion of socialism then the general population (or at least in the US they are, and while I have less certainty about other countries I think its a more general trend).
To me "socialist methods" pretty much means you have a socialist system (if those are the main methods you use). Typically socialist ideals will go hand in hand with those methods (or at least with the effort to start using such methods, many people who have had to live with the reality of such methods may start to lose some of their idealism about them), but they are not required in order to have socialism.
A couple of counterargument to this might be
The military while it technically does produce services, isn't normally considered part of the "means of production". We usually wouldn't call the existence of police and courts, a sign that the overall system is socialist, they are more a sign that it isn't an anarchy. There are certain functions that you are really the core of what being a government is about. The ability to protect the nation and its interests would seem to be one of those, and it could be argued that the military is thus not socialism. Still I would have to say at least that the military is an organization that "uses socialist methods". And a very large military that uses up a huge fraction of societies wealth and employs and controls many of its people would be "statist", whether or not it would be "socialist".
ben--
Don't mistake my using the label "socialist" as perjorative. To be fair to you, under most circumstances, I would mean it perjoratively. (I run well to the right of most people here.) The most accurate description for the military mentality is "military," but that's not necessarily very illuminating to people who have had very little experience with the Armed Forces.
I think that "socialist" is the best widely-known label for an organization in which one's supervisor can unironically chastise someone for "being an individual."
I agree with you that all of this is necessary. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear above, but I wasn't making a value judgement, just an observation. Like I said before, it's an artifact of command responsibility, which is very important in maintaining discipline, accountability, and the rest.
As to making the approval authority Company-grade: The feature of having an approving officer who doesn't deal with somebody on a day-to-day basis is that you are forced to put your ducks in a row to justify throwing somebody out. It's less likely to result in abuse, (or the appearance thereof) or a witch-hunt due to personality conflicts. The obvious downside is that putting your ducks in a row can take a lot of time and effort. I guess I'm being contrary to be contrary here. I can definitely think of people I'd like to toss out, but I can also think of a lot of captains I wouldn't want to have the ability to toss people out.
Rex--
And then you go to the War College, where they replace the plexiglass with a steel plate.
Well, I'm sure that a guy would be passed around to a few different CO's because yes, personality conflicts do arise. And yeah a CO shouldn't be able to fire a Squad Leader right out of the Army. My argument though is for these guys that just came in the Army, are on their fourth company in 8 months. The ones that are so bad people talk about how dumb they are. In short their stupidity is legendary already. After 3 weeks at their duty station they're past that initial entry phase firing procedure.
There is no functional difference between the Method and its ideal. China is a socialist system correct? Then with capitalism China is only using the methods not the ideal correct? The military is the same way. Everything is a method, or it should be. There are certain basic principles to adhere and its their applications that are different.
But I need to stop. Nothing is more personally annoying to me than a debate of definitions. At that point it is so trivial a difference that if everyone was forced to adopt what they came up with there would be little real difference between the group.
If I were to pick one thing the military has dead wrong, and it is so obvious. It is the fact you get a pay raise when you get married... Every other job on the planet Earth you are stretching your income but in the military you have suddenly become a better soldier, airmen, or marine. What don't like the logic jump? Well when you pay somone more money, in this society anyway, you are rewarding him or her for a job well done. I don't give a damn if the military is saying they're adjusting his income to better support his family. I interpret his marriage as this guy has suddenly become better at his job than me. In the best of circumstances this is a slight, in most it is a very personal insult that has made my decision to leave the employ of the military in a few months so very, very, easy.
ben--
Agreed on the definitional argument. I think we're just using different words for the same thing, anyway.
If someone is being passed around from company to company, then the Battalion Commander and Sergeant Major are definitely going to be aware that this guy is a screw-up--so you can retain discharge authority at field-grade level. In this instance, I'd be curious what this guy's NCO evaluation report was looking like. If they were smart enough to keep him in a company long enough that he had rated time in each one, the Sergeant First Class board would see a pattern of poor NCOERs and maybe keep him from moving up.
In any case, with a pattern of counseling statements and poor NCOERs, the grenade incident should actually be enough to get him chaptered out. It depends if his leadership was willing to put the effort into it. I'd be curious as to why he's not a SGT now, though. This is definitely enough for non-judicial punishment.
This goes back to my initial point about how contractors can be more efficient for reasons that have little to do with the amount they pay their workers, though. They wouldn't need to wait to build a counseling packet, etc., they could just fire his ass.
I assume in your last paragraph, you're referring to the different basic allowance for housing rates for single and married servicemembers. I can see where you are coming from on one hand, but I'd have to think on it seriously before backing a change to that. Like I said above, it's his chain of command's problem if someone isn't taking care of his family, and I'm reluctant to make that more difficult. Especially since junior enlisted don't make much money.
ben - Look at it this way. Paying more for people when they have a family, allows the military to get away with paying enlisted people less when they don't have a family. That justification may not be there for officers (at least not senior officers) but it probably makes sense for them to do it that way for junior enlisted.
Thinking further about the BAH argument--
What is just in this situation is also kind of a definitional problem--it depends on how you look at the money that shows up in your LES. Technically, the military is not "paying you more because you have a family." Servicemembers get "allowances" to cover things that the military is supposed to provide, if it doesn't provide them for whatever reason. The first one, which you alluded to in a previous post, is food. If you aren't being given meals in the Dining Facility, you are given a Basic Allowance for Subsistance (BAS).
The second thing military is obligated to provide you is housing. They do this two ways: (1) give you a room or house on post (2) if there is no room on post, throw you money to get living space on the economy. This money they throw you (basic allowance for housing, or BAH) calculated based on: (1) pay grade (2) family situation (whether or not you have dependants) (3) the average rent in your zip code.
If your buddies who get married fail to get a statement of non-availability (a document from the housing office stating that no on-post housing is available) then they get no additional money. Since they're getting housing on-post, they are not entitled to BAH. If there's no room, they are entitled to the average rent that they would pay in the local area.
This also causes a lot of heartache from the other side of the table, when someone wants to live off-post but can't. Say their family situation and pay grade entitles them to $950.00 a month BAH. They may be able find perfectly acceptable housing for $700.00 off post, and would then pocket the other $250.00. If they can't get a statment of non-availability, they are not permitted to receive any money whatsoever, and view it as losing $250.00.
Like your anger about the total pay difference for married/unmarried (actually w/ or w/o dependents) it depends on your view as to what you are "entitled" whether or not you are being screwed.
(Side notes: All things listed as "allowances"--clothing is the third one for enlisted--are non-taxable. Thus, the distinction has legal import.
Also, I know I've simplified the above a bit for discussion, i.e., officers and senior NCOs can elect to live off-post)
"Do other nations outsource their military support operations...?"
C'mon, other nations have "outsourced" entire military operations forever.
Say "mercenaries".
BTW, if anyone wants to join the French Foreign Legion you still can.
The US is just getting more efficient than other nations at specializing its outsourcing, for reasons that should be obvious.