It
does not matter anymore how many troops the US has on the ground. For
some time the number of mercenaries and contractors who represent
themselves and their corporations, rather than national policy, has
exceeded official troops
Pentagon
Has No Idea What 108,000 Contractors Are Doing
26
January, 2013
The
number of contractors working in Afghanistan now vastly outnumbers
American troops stationed there, according to a Congressional
Research Service report.
CRS, along with the Government
Accountability Office, also
determined that the Pentagon is unable to properly document the work
these contractors are doing. And the information DOD is receiving is
often unreliable and inaccurate.
According
to CRS, there are now 108,000 private workers in Afghanistan, a
workforce that dwarfs the 65,700 American troops still stationed
there. That means there are 1.6 contractors for every American
soldier in Afghanistan. This is an increase from last month, when The
Fiscal Times reported
that there were 1.4
contractors per American soldier
.
Given
the size of the private forces, it’s not surprising that CRS found
that in recent years, the Defense Department spent more than any
other agency to support contractor work.
“Over
the last six fiscal years, DOD obligations for contracts performed in
the Iraq and Afghanistan areas of operation were approximately $160
billion and exceeded total contract obligations of any other U.S.
federal agency,” CRS found.
The CRS report comes in the wake of a recent GAO report that the United States spent $195 billion for contractor services in 2010, or twice what it spent on contractors in 2001, before the start of the war in Afghanistan.
|
The
increase in the contractors to troop ration is yet another indication
that although the vast majority of troops are leaving Afghanistan, a
private army will remain in the country for years.
But
the CRS and GAO reports did more than simply document how much was
being spent on contractors. They also explored contractor oversight
and DOD’s ability to track contractor work.
Taken
together, they amount to yet another indictment of how the Pentagon
deals with private workers. CRS found that the Pentagon lacked the
ability to document the work each contractor is performing. It also
found even when the government has information on contractors, it’s
often inaccurate and doesn’t reflect the actual work being done.
This leaves the Pentagon unable to determine if the hundreds of
billions it’s spending are leading to effective results.
GAO
found a number of faults with DOD’s contracting process, beginning
with their inability to account for work being done in each branch.
It attributes this problem to one that has hamstrung the Pentagon’s
financial auditing process: Different branches of the military
use different
systems to track contractor work.
“DOD
components used various methods and data sources, including their
inventories of contracted services, to estimate contractor [full-time
equivalents] for budget submissions, but GAO’s analysis found that
the contractor [full-time equivalents] estimates have significant
limitations and do not accurately reflect the number of contractors
providing services to DOD.”
Each
report found that the inability to track contractor work makes it
nearly impossible for DOD to budget in an effective way. But they
also made clear that failures to properly monitor contractors
ultimately hurt readiness on the battlefield.
“Given
current concerns over the reliability of contracting data, the
information in the central database may not be sufficiently reliable
for decision making at the strategic level. This lack of data makes
it difficult to determine to what extent the billions of dollars
spent … have contributed to achieving the mission,” CRS found.
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