Founder of Blackwater's Drive to Build a Private Air Force
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
America's use of PMCs is as old, actually older, than the country itself. Many of the issues that led to Blackwater's infamy from their time in Iraq were directly caused by State Department incompetence (I doubt anyone would want to argue that the US State Department is an efficient, well-run, non-politicized entity). Erik Prince is not some crazy Christian zealot out to wage a holy war; if anything, he provided the US government with unique capability that they desperately needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he hadn't been involved in Iraq.
I see nothing evil or nefarious about a defense contractor commissioning efficient tactical aircraft for anti-terrorism and civil defense operations. The fact that it's Erik Prince, and the mass media has painted him as the evil overlord that caused all of our problems in Iraq, doesn't make it any different. It would be strange if someone who was highly competent and specialized in defense operations, who had enough money, WASN'T building these sorts of things.
Look, I'm mad about what the US government did in Iraq. Everyone should be. We shouldn't have even gone there. But none of this is Erik Prince's fault.
Venture capital firms have "scouts," giving them access to deals they'd otherwise overlook or couldn't access. The US defense and intelligence communities have people like Erik Prince.
And I know most of you don't think it as a necessary war. All I remember from Blackwater is open expense accounts, jet skis, the best hotels, the best of everything. Why--because they were getting paid a huge amounts, with weird accounting. 'Drive the cost up boys--the government will pay.' I might be confusing Blackwater with Halliburton? Again--too angry to go over that history again.
Yea--I know their were other players, and ultimately the government was at fault.
(Don't have the stomach this morning to provide any factoids.)
> America's use of PMCs is as old, actually older, than the country itself.
Yes, but the use of PMCs back in those days was largely because the colonies and the early nation couldn't muster a large enough military on its own. There's absolutely no reason the U.S. needs to use PMCs (at many times the cost). If there's a need for long-term need for specific skill-sets, the military can always add more MOSs that fill those needs -- or use any of the available official paramilitary organizations that it has at its command. That government run units weren't selected to fulfill those essential security functions implies a great deal about the function the State Department wished the PMCs to fulfill.
> Erik Prince is not some crazy Christian zealot out to wage a holy war;
The problem is that Erik Prince is those things, and his company (among many, or given the official available organizations at the government's disposal) was selected and continued to be selected is important.
Is that any different than the Ceo of a pharmaceutical corporation that chooses to treat erectile dysfunction instead of real diseases? Or the CEO of a tobacco or alchohol company?
There are a lot of CEOs with kind of funky world views and opinions of themselves and rationalization about the "good" that their companies do. Being a bit sociopathic is almost a job requirement for them. Erik prince is in a nasty business and I'm not defending that but as portrayed it seems like he developed a world view that is somehow compatible with the work, that just seems like a normal ceo to me.
If pfizer, in researching a drug to treat a heart disease[1], discovers a drug that treats a different bloodflow disorder, what is wrong with it offering that treatment?
As long as the US does not reinstate conscription (the Draft), it will need PMC's to fill the gaps for military force.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/236365-rangel-renews-call-...
How? The next democratic candidate for the POTUS already has a global mindset for the US:
> In Clinton’s view, the apparent purpose of America’s existence is to lead the world.
http://www.theglobalist.com/clinton-in-the-bush-league-on-fo...
Under her view, you can't be the world's policeman without having to bust some heads.
That doesn't make it right.
The use of slaves is older than the country itself too...
I have many friends and family that have participated in Iraq II and Afghanistan. They see PMCs as morale destroyers. While they are getting paid E-4 rates, or higher, the PMCs are getting paid 4-5x that for doing the same damn job!
They've had to learn to do more with less while the PMCs show up with shiny new toys all the time. And if that wasn't enough they were getting calls or letters from home saying their benefits had been cut, allowances were down, etc. Then the DoD was "winding down" it's campaigns by replacing enlistees with even more PMCs. Suddenly, guys that wanted to make a career in the armed forces, and had planned to stay 10-20 years, couldn't re-up. In the end few of them felt they had no choice but to join Academy or Blackwater since job prospects back home were so meager.
They were making things so much better in Iraq the PM wanted them out of his country because of the unaccountability and civilian deaths directly attributable to them. Shooting civilians in the street is the first thing I think of when the word Blackwater comes up.
What an Iraqi PM claims to want publicaly is likely to contain at least three levels of indirection, or the person filling the role wouldn't be qualified for the role.
It would be much easier to declare where the misdirections are if you expect them, than to postulate the law that would make your syllogism work.
If you were a corporal driving trucks making $30k and saw a contractor doing your job making $100k what would you think?
Note that is pretty much what I did after my 4 years were up sans the deployments!
I think those that wanted to reup were from high unemployment areas and were afraid to find out what they would do next.
But I don't have first hand experience. This is just relayed to me over BBQ and beer talk.
It's funny how Prince gets the blame for what islamists have been doing for decades. Islamic imperialism existed before Prince, before the US and unfortunately unless LKY comes back from the grave with an armada it will continue to exist after we're long beheaded.
It's pretty likely that the business surrounding the conversion of the aircraft will lead to criminal investigation and/or convictions in Austria after this exposé.
- hiding his agenda from FSG which included violating U.S. defense export regulations, culminating in being stripped of control over operations at FSG
- failing to disclose to FSG that he had an ownership stake in Airborne while negotiating contracts with them as a representative of FSG
- as a part-owner of Airborne, actively encouraging the company to violate Austrian statutes on production and export of military-grade aircraft
...and more I'm probably missing, and that doesn't even take into account his failure to actually deliver to his "clients" as outlined in the piece.
Now if you have legitimate counterpoints in response to the items raised in the article, I'd love to hear them, but your comment is the textbook definition of a strawman. As far as I can tell this piece is just exposing the truth about who Erik Prince is, and you're right that he's not a Christian zealot out to wage a holy war: he is actually an opportunistic parasite who takes advantage of power imbalances in areas in crisis, manipulates organizations to further his own personal profit without any sense of right or wrong informing his decisions, and actively skirts legal restrictions around the world as he sees fit. He certainly doesn't come off as competent in any way.
If anything, the right-wing should be more concerned than the left that someone as ethically challenged as Prince is engaging in the activities he's engaging in--it makes them look even worse. Why are you being an apologist for this kind of scumbag?
In the light of the above and many other incidents in Iraq your contention that things would have been messier is questionable to say the least, and your apologia for blackwater and Eric prince unfounded.
Roosevelt said 'not one war millionaire' from WWII and it's one of the things that made WWII legitimate and successful.
Adventurers wearing the mantle of patriotism while enriching themselves and leaving a trail of destruction and hatred that will last for generations are one of the things that made Iraq and Afghanistan a travesty.
WWII made a lot of millionaires. I suggest you re-evaluate what you've been led to believe regarding that.
Also contractors didn't make Iraq and Afghanistan a travesty, that was on state actors.
Sure enough, the US is re-learning why mercenary armies have always been a bad idea throughout history.
In my opinion, if there are adequate mechanisms for the control of mercenaries (such as not allowing them to have more power than the public army, or the restriction to / of particular capabilities), having mercenaries in particular situations (such as people with a high degree of specialization) could be feasible.
The problem here is that they were given ample independent power with adequate supervision, again imho.
A regular army is supposed to go out, win a conflict ("shoot the bad guys"), go home, get decorated, enjoy pensions and glory; that's the core mission, and its core competency is (or rather should be) to get that done in the shortest possible amount of time (or even not getting engaged in the first place). A mercenary only gets paid as long as there is an ongoing conflict involving a wealthy-enough client. He's not interested in ending the conflict; thinking you can police him in seeing it some other way is just deluded.
An army that doesn't fight is a budget that is claiming to be cut, and you can see that discussion taking place in several european countries. In the United States, however, they have wars to fight, and so the army and its space is a huge industry, with one client, the US government; and if there are no wars to fight, it will quickly collapse.
There are in fact a lot of accusations that the military industry in the United States instigates action for that specific purpose. So they don't only keep alive the fire, as the mercenaries - they also push to start new ones! And I can tell you, the Army has more political force than mercenaries to do this.
It's a gimmick to create "littler government" and circumvent the incredible beaurocracy that the military itself has helped create. It's also a jobs program and wealth distribution channel for a very specific class of people. At the end of it all, it also serves some specific military needs, in Iraq black water didn't follow the same rules of engagement that the military did and military leadership wanted that.
So if there is a need for these forces, they need to be a lot more open about their operations with the government. With more oversight then even the regular troops and accountability up to CEO level of the company for actions performed by their armies.
None of that precludes that some parts of that structure to be private. You just need to have a structure that is resilient to non-compliance.
So I actually agree with you: if the United States want to use mercenaries, they should improve how they do it. But then again, there might be a way to do it that works.
I do not think this is practical or even desirable.
Instead, more and more, the US is trying to become a world government, with 6.7 billion people affected by their choices, indirectly taxed by their choices (US corps replacing local companies and transporting the profit out of the country), without any representation.
This is a very unbalanced situation, and is just asking for a revolution. Which will end up making life worse for almost everyone.
We need a fair world government if we want to do these things, and that means representation of all people.
Obviously, the US, which would lose the most from this, objects.
Until next war.
Or the weakness of those countries towards US that can be explained by recent history.
I really don't see why you draw a distinction. War crimes are war crimes, and should be punished regardless of the perpetrators.
Regarding state actors, I am 100% for punishing them, but see this as a bigger issue of corruption of morals and ethics in general. In the military i see the issue as a failure in the oversight processes and support frameworks. Military has always been secretive about their mistakes etc, which in my mind is understandable (not excusable). However, it seams like the compartmentalizing of the different areas of operations have completely sealed off the solders from any kind of support framework. Which means that anything that should be reported, never gets to the people who needs to see it.
This last part applies to the Blackwater types as well, with probably even more pressure to not do anything and look the other way etc.
And what about the European and American nationals who joined the kurds to fight ISIS in Syria? Are they traitors and should be jailed because they fight for a foreign army?
These are regular army units where the enlisted are not native nationals.
The first sentence from linked article about French Foreign Legion says that The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831, unique because it was created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces.
I repeat if it did not sink in: Foreign Legion and The Gurkhas are not private mercenary units, they are not private armies.
The main argument of calgoo was that "Private militarizes armies should NEVER be allowed to exist.".
This is very far from being "a very nationalistic position". He did not say that foreign nationals should not be enlisted into national armies.
So please, could we stop this bullshit now?
I do not have definitive answer (opinion) for your last question.
Perhaps the issue is that this power to commit crimes without punishment exists in the first place. Doesn't matter whether the government does it themselves or they delegate.
The age of kings is long gone.
It's probably better for civilization if a democratic government has a monopoly on extreme force like bombers, WMDs. War is sufficiently stupid, it's probably better if entrepreneurs don't disrupt it, and the military remains the one 100% socialist enterprise in America.
When the United States left Iraq it left a huge security void which has allowed ISIS to thrive. Why would it be immoral for Baghdad to have hired a PMC to help defend against ISIS? It's not like Iraqi troops were somehow magically killing less civilians. When these cases happen they are written off as casualties and no one is ever punished.
The utter cowardice and incompetence of the Iraqi army has helped for 8 Million to live under the control of ISIS. Do you think these people would care if it was an Iraqi or Syrian who may accidentally kill them instead of a well paid mercenary? Do you think that it is more moral to allow these people to live under the constant threat of rampant murder or rape than it would be to allow for private militarizes to exist?
It seems to me that western soldiers aren't really supposed to die anymore. Every single lost American solider somehow matters 1000x more than some Iraqi, Syrian, or Ukrainian. Despite the US easily having the ability to eliminate the ISIS threat it does not. There just isn't the political will to send Americans into harms way. Meanwhile many security forces lack the capability of actually handling the threats they are encountering.
PMC's could possibly solve this. No one cares if a mercenary dies. I don't see a well paid mercenary abandoning their post, tanks, equipment, along with a city of a million without having fired a shot. You can't say the same about the Iraqi army. Even should PMC's have somehow a double or triple civilian casualty rate it would still be more moral for those civilians to die than allow millions of people to fall into the murderous regime of ISIS. Of course it will always be preferable for state forces to be able to handle the threats they encounter. But given the reality that many cannot and will not receive the boots on the ground assistance to win their respective conflicts and protect their citizenry, would it really be immoral for a private force to pick up the slack?
It's not like this man was trying to see fighter to ISIS or North Korea. He was trying to create services that would assist state actors against terrorists. Given that no one else is wiling to provide assistance with this, I cannot help but feel that the ends justify the means here.
At least the page isn't full of blatant lies (well the philantropy is a bit questionable) but it's very selective about the facts it brings up. I'd expect it would be much harder to get approved edits done on this page than most other Wikipedia pages, including those of big name politicians. You'd have to really pay attention to the sources you'd be citing and careful about the language you use not to get disputed/deleted.
How common is it for single engine single seat aircraft to be flown across large oceans? Does the Thrush 510G have sufficient fuel capacity?
I'm no expert nor have I done the calculations, but 12 hours sounds like enough time to cross the Atlantic. What I don't know is whether the fuel tank was expanded/replaced.
Typical cruise speed is 160mph and ferry range is only 800 miles, meaning it's taking the northern route across Goose Bay, Greenland, and Iceland.
It is routine. SOCATA deliver their popular single-turboprop TBM aircraft from their factory in southern France via Ireland, Iceland and Canada to US customers. Likewise Pilatus stage PC-12s through Scotland as the first hop.
Spotters at Keflavik in Iceland have a great variety!
Cessnas flow in the other direction, though less frequently. Even a little piston-engined C172 has made the eastbound delivery journey and he skipped Iceland!
Usually the flights are made by contracted ferry pilots, from companies such as Southern Cross
TLDR; A great deal of money (allegedly only $8M, but probably more including facilities and engineering) and effort was put in to acquiring, adapting and testing two conventional, piloted planes as offensive weapons and surveillance platforms. They were riddled with problems including registration and licensing and actual flight problems and have never seen service. Prince let down his clients, raised significant heat from western governments and subsequently his own board members (who then needed to cover their collective asses), but sidestepped these issues by seeking Chinese government investment: his efforts continue.
After all of this, from a business perspective one wonders if larger COTS UAV could have been utilized more cost effectively.
From a moral perspective, everyone mentioned in this article including the Austrian engineers are culpable.
Perhaps it should at least be just the subheading?
I wonder how international laws and military laws cover PMCs. I also wonder how efficient they really are. I guess they mostly are mostly used for flexibility and lower important objectives.
The larger problem is discipline, you can easily have a PMC do some horrible thing or a scandal, which could create international tensions.
The article describes an operation where the Chinese were funding the manufacture of light attack aircraft to be used to guard special interests in the civil wars of corrupt African nations.