Governments rarely admit to using mercenaries.

Yet private contractors perform almost every function essential to military operations, what the UK Financial Times has called a “creeping privatization of the business of war.” In the first Gulf War, about two percent of US personnel were contractors. By 2003, it was 10 percent.

Two decades later, private military and civilian contractors account for 50 percent or more of the Department of Defense workforce deployed in active Middle Eastern conflict zones. How did this happen?

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Part One: The Quiet Rise of National Security, Inc.

Running for President in 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to make government more efficient, lean, and responsive by looking at whether some federal agencies should be privatized or abolished. The plan was to start with almost one million federal positions, those said to be “commercially replaceable,” and open them up for private bidding. Shortly after taking office, he took the idea a step further, stating his preference for privatized peacekeeping operations.

Like many Bush pronouncements, these turned out to be misleading. Although the candidate talked up competitive bidding and a Sunset Review Board to recommend which “duplicative and ineffective programs” should be eliminated, as president he presided over enormous no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other corporate friends, and — even more unsettling — the wholesale “outsourcing” of key military operations and information technology (IT) services.

In Iraq, private military contractors supplied more trainers and security forces than all remaining members of the “coalition of the willing” except the US. According to the Economist, approximately 15,000 civilian security guards were stationed there by 2004, at least 6,000 of them armed. Some contractors maintained sophisticated weapons systems that were previously handled by the army.

The results were not impressive. The country remained violent and unstable, the human and financial costs kept rising, and the privately-trained Iraqi police didn’t perform well.

Using contractors kept down the casualty counts of US troops, so there was usually less outcry. “It almost puts a layer between political bosses and events on the ground,” explained Mark Burgess of the Center for Defense Information. But giving contractors prominent roles posed risks. For example, two contractors, Caci International and the Titan Corporation, were implicated in charges of torture, humiliation and rape leveled at the US military in Iraq.

Private military intelligence specialists “played an important role” in interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison, the UK Guardian revealed. In addition, giving high-paying jobs to foreigners tended to inflame Iraqis, a bit the same as US workers became upset when their jobs were outsourced. More than $20 billion — a third of the Army’s budget for Iraq and Afghanistan — went to contractors in the early 2000s.

Then the acquisition of DynCorp, a leading private military company (PMC), by Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) took military-intelligence privatization to the next level: turning over major aspects of government domestic security apparatus and its military operations around the world to the same corporation.

It was the beginning of a long-term transformation — a public-private synergy. And a hallmark of fascism: the merging of the public and private sectors, often described as Corporatism. In Mob Boss style, Trump is taking it another step, the extortion of a stake in companies in exchange for favorable treatment.

With 92,000 employees worldwide, CSC already had more employees than the CIA 20 years ago and worked with virtually every major US agency. Through its State and Defense Department contracts, it implemented foreign policy by proxy and in secret. Its “private security personnel” were effectively immune from criminal sanctions. As The Economist put it, they were “outside the chain of command” and “not subject to military discipline.”

Through its crucial IT work with the National Security Agency (NSA), it upgraded and helped maintain the world’s most expansive and highly secure surveillance and communication systems. It also managed Air Force bases and information warfare planning, Army weapons systems, naval security, most of NASA’s air fleet, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) border crossing technology. In short, it became a full-service national defense and homeland security company, an early division on National Security, Inc.

By 2017 CSC had grown to become one of the largest software and IT outsourcing companies in the US, serving Fortune 500 companies and governments globally. It provided massive programming support for IBM and Honeywell systems and developed the flight operations facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But the name Computer Sciences Corporation was retired that year when its operations were combined with Hewltt Packard’s services wing (HPE) to create the modern IT infrastructure firm, DXC Technology.

A Fortune 500 global IT services and consulting company, DXC provides software engineering, AI-driven data analytics, and something called custom application development. That means designing, building, and deploying software tailored to a specific organization’s workflows, users, and goals. DXC employs over 125,000 professionals across 70+ countries.

DXC has more than 280 public sector and government customers across 25 countries. It has a dedicated aerospace and defense division with over 10,000 professionals, many of whom hold security clearances. Its core government services include cloud and infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity, and integrating artificial intelligence. It downplays military activities, but they are part of the mix.

The scope of work for Private Military Contractors (PMCs) runs the gamut from cooks to the maintenance people on fighter jets, to communications and IT technicians, to trainers and recruiters, to generals providing strategic expertise, to fighter pilots and commandos. “The entire spectrum of military services has been privatized in some way or another,” notes Peter Singer, who worked with the Brookings Institution. Today private military and security services companies generate up to $280 billion a year.

PMCs like DynCorp, Vinnell (which trained Saudi Arabia’s national guard), and Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) have provided the training, expertise, and strategic analysis vital for waging many wars. Yet they reject the mercenary label and usually claim they don’t participate in battles. MPRI used to claim that its people didn’t carry guns. But as Peter Singer has noted, it can be an empty distinction when “a person pushing a computer button can be just as lethal as another person pulling a trigger.”

Whatever Happened to MPRI?

In July 2000, the original equity holders of Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) sold the company to L-3 Communications for $40 million. Operating as an operational division under L-3, it continued to secure extensive contracts supporting US and NATO operations worldwide. In 2014, the Department of Justice announced MPRI agreed to pay $3.2 million to resolve claims that it submitted false labor charges on a contract supporting the US Army in Afghanistan. The allegations originated from a whistleblower lawsuit under the False Claims Act.

The company was also the target of high-profile lawsuits—such as a case filed by Serbian refugees regarding MPRI’s military advising to Croatian forces during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. This lawsuit was eventually dismissed by a federal judge in 2014, though some state civil conspiracy claims were evaluated. Like a lab creation, it was time for this entity to evolve.

As defense markets shifted and mergers within the aerospace and defense industry progressed. L-3 (later L3 Technologies) began restructuring. MPRI’s assets were absorbed into broader defense portfolios or divested. Today, the “MPRI” brand is largely defunct, its former functions swallowed into the consolidated operations of other global defense conglomerates.

That’s the way it goes sometimes with private military groups: from secret weapon to disposable tool.

Today, the leading PMCs and security contractors are major global enterprises that provide tactical training, convoy escorts, intelligence operations, and logistical support to governments and private corporations worldwide. The most prominent firms currently shaping the sector include Constellis, G4S (Allied Universal), MAG Aerospace, Northbridge Services Group, Vinnell Corporation, and the Wagner Group. In the next posts, I’ll discuss each of them, dig into DynCorp’s activities, and explain how this growth industry has operated and adapted.

Next: Private equity funding fuels the success of top contractors

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Greg Guma is a Vermont writer, former editor, and author of 15 books, including Managing Chaos: Adventures in Alternative Media. Visit the author’s blog. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image is from the author

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