Using private security contractors has the potential to jeopardize the status of U.S. operations abroad, can put American lives at risk, and may cut against the very foreign policy goals our missions and embassies are seeking to achieve. They must be subject to oversight.
With forecasted Defense budget cuts due to the potential of sequestration, private security contractors will be essential assets needed to ensure national security and prevention of total economic collapse.
Academi is obviously mindful of some of the past controversies its ancestral companies were embroiled in and has taken steps, as much as humanly possible, to make a repeat of such incidents impossible.
Gee, with all due apologies to Stephen Ambrose's famed book, the whole Band of Brothers concept of bonding may have gained new meaning when it comes t...
WASHINGTON -- Just about every policy lawmakers are considering for a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff would involve either raising individual...
For those who work on private military and security contracting issues one longstanding, and still vexing, issue is encapsulated in just three words: "inherently governmental functions"
Is there an appropriate role for Private Military Companies (PMCs) in the contemporary security context?
Maybe, but less than you may think, accordin...
Admittedly, just one of many factors affecting Afghanistan, but an important one nonetheless, is the state of its substantial private security contrac...
As troops are replaced with private security contractors, it would be foolish for a new administration to continue to ignore the vivid warnings of what happens when the U.S. outsources its inherent governmental functions.
Now that the London Olympics are receding into memory and the world has moved on to other pressing sports issues, like substitute NFL referees, the time is right to look back and ask one very important question; namely, just how badly did G4S screw up?
Those who follow the issue of attacks by Somali pirates on commercial shipping are likely aware that many shipowners' firms have turned to private sec...
Sometimes, in all that is said and written about the use of private contractors in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, people forget that it is not just the Defense Department that uses them.
Evidently, the ICoC, to paraphrase Captain Barbossa of the Pirates of Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl movie, is more of a guideline than an actual rule. Welcome aboard the Black PSC, Miss Turner.
The U.S. Supreme CourtĀ refused to dismiss the manslaughter and weapons charges against theĀ four defendantsĀ Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball and has declined to comment.
The emerging economic paradigm indicates that use of maritime armed guards will only increase. That means the private security companies that combat the pirates were earning much more than the pirates themselves. Thus piracy is good for at least some businesses.
WASHINGTON -- Afghan reconstruction efforts remain severely hampered even after nearly $100 billion in spending over the last 10 years, according to ...
WASHINGTON -- Former Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said Wednesday that privatizing screening at airports -- a pet cause of a...
For many years those in the private security contracting industry have argued loudly that the people who carry guns in the field are not mercenaries. And they are exactly right, as I have noted many times in the past.
Since 9/11, the homeland security state has come to campus just as it has come to America's towns and cities, its places of work and its houses of worship, its public space and its cyberspace.
Privateers will be motivated by a bounty whether funded by the public coffers or via collections from civil penalties against pirate assets. Issued in tandem with bounties, letters of marque provide an efficient way to confiscate pirate vessels prior to attacks.
From a taxpayer's perspective we can accept a company may try its best but it may still screw up. That is why any government contract must have sufficient, qualified contracting officers riding herd on the company.
These documents provide information on how the State Department rated its contractors on criteria such as quality, cost control, business relations, timeliness of performance and customer satisfaction.
Given current security conditions in Iraq, including a string of bombings since late December more lethal to civilians than any seen in the last year of the U.S. presence, many could be nervous enough to be trigger-happy. Is this war really over or have we just outsourced it?