Presence of Contractors in U.S. Military Operations Will Grow, Says Coburn.

Recent military operations around the globe reaffirmed the belief held by many military leaders that the numbers of contractors in the battlefield will grow, said Gen. John G. Coburn, head of the Army Materiel Command (AMC). An expanding role for civilian contractors, particularly in logistics-related work, only offers further "proof that the world has changed," he noted.

Coburn's remarks were part of a presentation of AMC capabilities, called "Around the Army in 3,000 Seconds," held during the Association of the U.S. Army's annual convention in Washington, D.C.

As an example of greater reliance on contractors, Coburn cited U.S. military participation in East Timor, which occurred about a year ago. That operation involved an international United Nations-led coalition seeking to stop hostilities between the Indonesian Army and rebel groups in East Timor, located in the South Pacific.

U.S. Army reservists, under AMC's "operational control," Coburn said, "oversaw a private U.S. company, that used Russian and Bulgarian crews to fly western helicopters to support an Australian led U.N. mission in East Timor." Such arrangements, he said, are indicative of how "the world has changed."

In that light, Coburn commended AMC's so-called LOGCAP program, which means "logistics civil augmentation." Under the program, contractors are hired to support U.S. military missions on site. AMC has used the LOGCAP program in recent years to send contractors to missions in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, among others.

During the briefing, Coburn showed footage of the East Timor operation. The film narrator said: "Contractors do take over the mission, and they do it well. LOGCAP provided an exit strategy for U.S. military forces. And it worked."

The message, said Coburn, "is that contractors will be all over our battlefields in the future, because we just don't have a huge logistics infrastructure anymore. Contractors have always been on the battlefield, but in the future, look for their contributions to be even greater."

The practice of hiring civilian contractors to work during military operations has been criticized, however, because it raises questions about how far the Defense Department should go in delegating responsibility to private sector civilians.

In a book published earlier this year, tided "Private Warriors," by Ken Silverstein, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist, the subject is discussed at length.

A decade ago, said Silverstein, "the men running these [Pentagon contractor] firms would have been called mercenaries. Today, they're merely the foot soldiers of privatization, by which the responsibilities of government are transferred to corporate hands--a process that now occupies the halls of war-making."

He noted that these companies conduct legitimate activities "such as supporting United Nations peacekeeping operations, by providing convoy protection and guarding refugee camps." For the government, Silverstein wrote, "privatization offers a number of distinct advantages.

"Primary among them is that the use of private military contractors allows the United States to pursue its geopolitical interests without deploying its own army."

Dan Nelson, a defense expert at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies told Silverstein: "Corporate entities are used to perform tasks that the government, for budgetary reasons or political sensitivities, cannot carry out.'"