Oct. 1, 2010
Private Contractors in Conflict Zones: The Good, the Bad, and the Strategic Impact
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the use of contractors reached a level unprecedented
in U.S. military operations. As of March 31, 2010, the United States deployed
175,000 troops and 207,000 contractors in the war zones. Contractors
represented 50 percent of the Department of Defense (DOD) workforce
in Iraq and 59 percent in Afghanistan. These numbers include both armed and
unarmed contractors. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, the term contractor includes
both armed and unarmed personnel unless otherwise specified. The presence
of contractors on the battlefield is obviously not a new phenomenon but
has dramatically increased from the ratio of 1 contractor to 55 military personnel
in Vietnam to 1:1 in the Iraq and 1.43:1 in Afghanistan.