While driving into work this past Thursday I caught a bit of an interesting NPR report on the number of private military forces being employed (it is apparently now a $100 billion/yr industry?). Some links:
- The Coalition of the Billing – Haiko Hebig has collected a bunch of links
- A Corporate Superpower? – numbers and analysis from Global Guerillas, a new Typepad blog by former UserLand Pres/CEO related to research for the book he’s writing on the future of terrorism/counter-terrorism. Good stuff:
- PMCs currently employ 15,000 security personnel (estimates are as high as 20,000). They represent the second largest military force in Iraq, behind the US. As Peter Singer says, “it is a coalition of the billing.”
- PMCs are funded by a combination of the DoD and private contractors. Between 10-25% of expenditures on reconstruction efforts is spent on PMC security forces.
- PMC security is expensive. It costs upwards of $2,000 a day for an experienced security guard in Iraq. This high pay has recruited some of the best soldiers in the world drawn from units such as Delta, the Seals, and the SAS. This has caused a reversal, more SAS trained personnel currently serve in UK PMCs than in the SAS itself (this is also probably true for Delta and the Seals too).