Lawmakers want fewer contractors doing training

If you're scratching your head after reading this Army Times article, you're not the only one.  Lawmakers want fewer contractors doing training - Army News, news from Iraq, - Army Times.

"Lawmakers want fewer contractors doing training," shouts the headline.  Plainly, someone in the upper echelons of the the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), or the Army, or in the Pentagon, or in Congress, is shouting fire.  Only there is no fire.  Not a single measurable, identifiable problem was described in the article.

Only perceptions.  For contractors are doing a lot of jobs that government normally does.  And in the current climate in Washington, this is bad.

Let me be clear, paying contractors to perform inherently governmental services has always been bad.  But that is not the complaint here.  The complaint is that there are a lot of contractors in Army classrooms and training areas where, earlier in the decade, those kinds of positions were normally filled with "green suiters."  Supposedly, this has "raised red flags" in the upper echelons of the Department of the Army and in Congress.

It's laughable!

For just a few short years ago, those same voices of concern were urging the military to hire more contractors in order to free up more service members for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There was a war going on!  Truth is, the Pentagon's long-held view that it could fight and win two wars, conducted simultaneously in separate theaters of operations, didn't wash.  It found that it couldn't even sustain itself, training-wise, in one war without bringing in some outside expertise.  Thus the greater reliance upon contractors.

It made sense to hire contractors--nearly all of whom are former military members and, these days, possessed of significant combat experience themselves--for training assignments and to deploy military trainers to the battlefield.  This enabled the Services to put greater numbers of troops into the full spectrum of operations and, at the same time, let the Departments capitalize on the knowledge, experience, and resourcefulness of (largely retired military) Defense contractors.

Granted, the setup was--is--somewhat expensive, but it made sense:  a little treasure invested over the short term to decrease the quantity of blood spilled over the long haul.  But not only did it make sense, the increase in this decade of contractors utilized for training happened, not because General Dynamics and Boeing and SAIC and others descended upon the service departments and demanded jobs, but because the same lawmakers who are now seeing "red flags" over so many contractors saw even bigger red flags when the Services could not put sufficient numbers into the field during a time of war.  They practically screamed for more contractors.  So they approved a plan of operations that would utilize more contractor services.

It was a plan of operations that, contrary to the article, did not create problems with things like creating new doctrine or integrating lessons learned.  It solved these kinds of problems.  Someone should study the volume of new and revised doctrine and lessons learned materials published during the past five to seven years.  I think you'll find that it significantly increased.  (And don't be surprised if you find that this work has been done by contractors also).

If TRADOC Commander, General Martin Dempsey wants to complain about the lack of new doctrine being developed for the current and future modular force, then maybe he should bump doctrine development up a little higher in his list of funding priorities (currently, it's priority number six, according to my own sources).  Contractors are not the real problem, here.  It's the way TRADOC (and the Army--and DOD) spends its money.  If you're familiar with the doctrine development business, you'll know that it has ALWAYS been underfunded, whether in peacetime or in war.

But the pendulum has been swinging back the other way now, for a couple of years, at least.  The Responsible Draw-down in Iraq is proceeding apace.  Operations in Afghanistan, while every bit as serious, are not as large as what once dominated the Iraqi landscape.  So the justification (TRADOC and Army approved, let's not forget) for hiring more contractors to fill military training slots is running thin.

So, big Army, if you want fewer contractors training your soldiers, quit hiring so many.  Don't, however, in the process blame them for your inability to do your own job.