Military contractors await details of Obama budget
Mar 1, 2009 Industry News
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
The good news for big military contractors from President Obama’s budget this week was his proposal to increase the basic Pentagon budget by 4 percent, to $534 billion.
But now the companies are contending with a new question: what will the priorities of the new administration — which has made clear it wants to shift spending from futuristic weapons systems to simpler arms that troops can use now — mean for the industry?
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Survey of PMC staff and contractors
Mar 1, 2009 Industry News, Jake's Posts
Jake Allen
I was recently contacted by a graduate student to assist with some research on Private Security/Military Companies. The request was pretty strait forward, the student wanted to get some information from actual contractors.
I have to be honest, I don’t usually put much stock in many of the reports I read coming out of academic circles. Not because the authors aren’t intelligent, they almost always are, rather because they rarely take the time or make the effort to speak with people in the industry, doing the work, before drawing their conclusions or opining on a subject they actually know very little about. They seem to often simply just reference previous academic papers and documents which suffer from the same failing. The better ones will have spoken with respected journos, war correspondents or think tankers, many of whom are very knowledgeable but still their opinion is inevitably ‘filtered’ due to a lack of personal experience.
So, when this student expressed an interest in getting information directly from the rank-in-file of security contractor community I jumped at the chance to assist.
I actually don’t want to lead you with too much more information as the format is very open.
Here is the deal: There are 13 questions, only the first one is mandatory. The rest are optional requiring that you answer them only if you feel you have something to contribute. Also it’s completely anonymous so you can speak (or actually type) freely.
I’d appreciate it greatly if you could give this 10 to 15 minutes of your time and please forward the link directly to any colleagues in the PMC industry. Click here to take the survey. If you have problems getting to the survey then copy and paste the following link into your internet browser’s address bar: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2h1304sfrplv7k9/start
Tags: survey
Obama Aims to Reduce Reliance on Contractors
Mar 1, 2009 Industry News
By CAM SIMPSON and CHRISTOPHER CONKEY at The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s federal budget blueprint signals his hope of rolling back Washington’s dependence on private-sector contractors, but the lack of specifics suggests the difficulty of the task.
The business sector is enmeshed as never before in the vital daily functions of government, on everything from census taking to spying. Under President George W. Bush, annual spending on contracts rose to $423 billion in 2006 from $208 billion in 2000, according to the Obama budget unveiled this week.
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Dogs of War: Blue helmets and bottom lines
Mar 1, 2009 David Isenberg, Dogs of War
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) — Is the world ready to let private military and security contractors participate in U.N. peace operations? When I ask this, I’m not talking about Hollywood celebrities calling for the firm formerly known as Blackwater to work in Darfur.
In one respect, this is a trick question as contractors have been and are involved in such operations.
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