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| U.S. Cannot Manage Contractors In Wars, Officials Testify On Hill |
| 2008-01-25 |
| With even more U.S. contractors now in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military personnel, government officials told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration is not prepared to manage the contractors' critical involvement in the American war effort. At the end of last September, there were "over 196,000 contractor personnel working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Jack Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness. Contractors "have become part of our total force, a concept that DoD [the Defense Department] must manage on an integrated basis with our military forces," he also said in prepared testimony for a hearing yesterday of the Senate homeland security subcommittee. "Frankly," he continued, "we were not adequately prepared to address" what he termed "this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors." Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and William M. Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office, testified that not enough trained service personnel are available to handle outsourcing to contractors in the wars. Solis said a military officer with a Stryker brigade deployed in Iraq had told the GAO about a contractor that had mishandled security screenings of Iraqis and foreigners. In the end, Solis said, the officer used his own personnel to accomplish the task, diverting staff from "their primary intelligence gathering responsibilities." Retired Army Gen. David M. Maddox, who has studied the contracting effort in Iraq as a member of an Army-appointed commission, said in his statement that it "has not fully recognized the impact of a large number of contractors" and "their potential impact to mission success." Maddox said the Army had five general officer positions for career contracting professionals in 1990 but has none today. The two-star general who runs the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq/Afghanistan, Maddox said, is an Air Force officer. Maddox added that 3 percent of Army contracting personnel are active-duty and that the acquisition workforce shrunk by 25 percent from 1990 to the end of fiscal 2000. While the contracting workload has increased sevenfold since 2000, he said, about half of the military officers and Army civilians in the contracting field "are certified for their current positions." Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) , the subcommittee's chairman, noted that the Defense Contract Audit Agency has reported that $10 billion of about $57 billion in contracts for services and reconstruction in Iraq "is either questionable or cannot be supported because of a lack of contractor information needed to assess costs." He added that more than 80 separate criminal investigations are underway involving contracts of more than $5 billion. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member who has investigated the contract issue during her trips to Iraq and Kuwait, stressed that "if people are not fired or demoted or if there is not a failure to promote in the military because of massive failure of appropriate oversight and management, things will not change." But when she asked Bowen and Solis if they knew of anyone who had been fired or denied promotion because of contracting mistakes disclosed in more than 300 reports over five years, they said they knew of none. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #6 "our Donk opposition, who would like to reduce the military to There - fixed that for ya', Frank. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-01-25 21:32 |
| #5 logistics isn't sexy, but an ill-equipped, ill-fed military performs exactly as you'd expect. Using contractors allows for flexibility, and is the smart move. Naturally, that doesn't sit well with our Donk opposition, who would like to reduce the military to peacekeeping in areas in which we have no strategic interest |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-01-25 19:49 |
| #4 Maddox added that 3 percent of Army contracting personnel are active-duty and that the acquisition workforce shrunk by 25 percent from 1990 to the end of fiscal 2000. S'where the 'savings in government' came from... While the contracting workload has increased sevenfold since 2000, he said, about half of the military officers and Army civilians in the contracting field "are certified for their current positions." And there are a heck of a lot of hoops to jump through to get certified. That also means time and money. Also, I don't see any mention of acquisition-workforce turnover (which in my branch is fairly high). Lots of other places in government and industry to go to where the money is better and the political/Congressional b.s. isn't as deep. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2008-01-25 16:08 |
| #3 TW, the number needed is the few thousand (2-3?) required to plus up the logistical system admin again. Many of those contractors will not be needed once we reduce forces in Iraq. I personally would not volunteer again if I knew I was going to interspace my training with KP. Most of the contracts deal with relatively short term logistics better dealt with by a contractor than plussing up Army units that don't get used. Personnel are a huge percentage of the Defense budget. |
| Posted by: Throger Thains8048 2008-01-25 13:03 |
| #2 The problem is that contractors fit into a gap in a military situation. They can no more be "managed" by the military than an equal number of US citizens visiting Iraq on their own. They can be told where they can't go, but they can't be told what to do. The US contract with them is on the same footing as a typical civilian contract, *not* a government contract. That is, a government contract has all sorts of silly rules that have to be micromanaged and enforced by bureaucrats *in the US*. However, contractors overseas don't have all those bureaucrats to watch over them, and they aren't going to, either. So they have to be dealt with simply. That is, like a typical non-government contract. If you hire someone to remodel your kitchen, you usually pay them half down and half when they satisfactorily complete the job. You have NO right to tell them HOW they do their job, WHO to buy their materials from, HOW to hire workmen, etc. No unions, no OSHA, no nothing. And while that bugs the HELL out of Washington, tough titty. If they want the job done, they have to do it the way the contractors want to do it; not the way Washington bureaucrats want it done. The one odd angle is under who's laws the contractors work. If they work under local laws, it will probably be cheaper in all respects, both price and quality. If they work under US laws, then it will cost a LOT more, but the quality will possibly be better. However, even under US laws, it doesn't mean under US rules. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-01-25 12:04 |
| #1 "over 196,000 contractor personnel working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan," Now we know the minimum by which the Armed Forces must expand in the immediate future, beyond actual fighting needs. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-25 11:51 |