Presence of Contractors in U.S. Military Operations Will Grow, Says Coburn.

• Author: Baker, Athanasia D.
• Position: Brief Article

Recent military operations around the globe reaffirmed the belief held by many military leaders that the numbers of contractors in the battlefield will grow, said Gen. John G. Coburn, head of the Army Materiel Command (AMC). An expanding role for civilian contractors, particularly in logistics-related work, only offers further "proof that the world has changed," he noted.

Coburn's remarks were part of a presentation of AMC capabilities, called "Around the Army in 3,000 Seconds," held during the Association of the U.S. Army's annual convention in Washington, D.C.

As an example of greater reliance on contractors, Coburn cited U.S. military participation in East Timor, which occurred about a year ago. That operation involved an international United Nations-led coalition seeking to stop hostilities between the Indonesian Army and rebel groups in East Timor, located in the South Pacific.

U.S. Army reservists, under AMC's "operational control," Coburn said, "oversaw a private U.S. company, that used Russian and Bulgarian crews to fly western helicopters to support an Australian led U.N. mission in East Timor." Such arrangements, he said, are indicative of how "the world has changed."

In that light, Coburn commended AMC's so-called LOGCAP program, which means "logistics civil augmentation." Under the program, contractors are hired to support U.S. military missions on site. AMC has used the LOGCAP program in recent years to send contractors to missions in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, among others.

During the briefing, Coburn showed footage of the East Timor operation. The film narrator said: "Contractors do take over the mission, and they do it well. LOGCAP provided an exit strategy for U.S. military forces. And it worked."

The message, said Coburn, "is that contractors will be all over our battlefields in the future, because we just don't have a huge logistics infrastructure anymore...