The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
The Outsourcing of the U.S. Army
by James Dunnigan
July 8, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
As part of the major reorganization the U.S. Army has been
undergoing for the last 18 months, it is using outsourcing and temps in a big
way. As a result, about 20 percent of army troops are finding themselves
getting moved, from civilian type jobs,
closer to the fighting. The army is scrutinizing every job they have, and
deciding which could be done by civilians. While the media reports a
“recruiting crises” in the army, they are missing the real story of how the
army is reorganizing so that it can get along without the people it is having
trouble recruiting. The people who actually do the fighting continue to join
up, and stay in. It used to be that most army jobs were, well, just government
jobs. Once a year you might have to go to the rifle range, and a couple of
times a year you might have to load gear on trucks and go “camping” (field
exercises) for a few days. You wore a uniform, and saluted your superiors. Not
a lot different than working for a major corporation, except the army had a
better pension plan. But all those non-combat troops getting shot at in Iraq,
and the army reorganization that was making certain that more troops actually
spent time in places like Iraq, made many potential recruits hesitate.
The army’s solution is to go back to the past, when many of
the “non-combat” troops were civilians. Way back in the day, these people were
called “camp followers,” and they took care of supply, support, medical care,
maintenance and “entertainment” (that’s where the term “camp follower” got a
bad name). The majority of these people were men, and some of them were armed,
mainly for defending the camp if the combat troops get beat real bad and needed
somewhere to retreat to. The army is using a lot more civilians now. In a war
like this, it’s cheaper to hire additional civilians, on short term contracts,
than it is to recruit and train more troops.
The army has actually been doing this, more and more, since
the 1960s. It does not draw a lot of attention to the program. Mainly because
some of the contractors, especially those in medical jobs, get paid far more
than someone in uniform doing the same job. But many of the civilians, hired to
do what was previously done by soldiers, are making as much, or less, than the
troops were paid (including benefits.) The army has always had a lot of civilians
around, but more of them are doing jobs in combat zones, or out in the field.
Many of the civilians are retired military, or have served for a few years.
They know the drill, and what they are getting into. Just as all those civilian
truck drivers getting shot at daily in Iraq, but doing it for the big
payday.
Even if you’re in Iraq, you often won’t even notice a
lot of the army civilians. They often wear army combat uniforms, without any
rank insignia. Some are armed. They work for the army without being in the
army. It’s going back to the past to find the future of the army.
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