Posted on 02/02/2008 4:55:16 AM PST by Virginia Ridgerunner
WASHINGTON - ITT Federal Services International, a defense contractor hired to maintain battle gear for U.S. troops in Iraq, repeatedly failed to do the job right.
Combat vehicles ITT declared as repaired and ready for action flunked inspections and had to be fixed again.
(snip)
The Army's ongoing arrangement with ITT, detailed in an audit from the Government Accountability Office, shows how captive the military has become to the private sector for overseas support. Even when contractors don't measure up, dismissing them may not be an option because of the heavy pace of operations.
(snip)
In ITT's case, there were too few soldiers to handle the maintenance duties and no other contractors ready to step in quickly, according to Redding Hobby, the Army Sustainment Command's executive director for field support operations.
"I'm not sure that our manning levels would have allowed us to do anything except wring our hands and worry and work people harder and work people overtime," Hobby said in a telephone interview.
(snip)
Contractors are responsible for a slew of duties, including repairing warfighting equipment, supplying food and water, building barracks, providing armed security and gathering intelligence.
The dependence has come with serious consequences.
During a congressional hearing on Jan. 24, Jack Bell, a senior Pentagon acquisition official, called the situation "unprecedented" and one "that, frankly, we were not adequately prepared to address."
(snip)
Many of the problems occurred in 2005 and 2006, when the insurgency in Iraq was at its height and there was a heavy burden on the contractor to get equipment back into the fight as quickly as possible, according to Hobby, the Army Sustainment Command official.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Government contracts limit who can bid by the sheer volume of paperwork & other crap you must put up with.
Not as hard to fire as civilian government employees who I have never seen one fired even when they do not come to work.
As a DoD engineer for 27 years, usage of contractors actually began under Bush 41 as we started to field more complex weapons. Clinton expanded its usage to keep DoD forces small and the budget small. Rumsfeld is an ethusiast for contractors because in theory you can fire them if they fail to meet cost and performance goals versus a civilian DoD worker and free up the soldier for combat duty. Concept works well in garrison and in Air Force (where the concept got started) and Navy because these units operate from rear area bases. The concept starts to fall apart in ground and foward area combat units because what do you do with these contractors when the foward area base is under attack (i.e insurgencies where rear areas are also frontline areas). To be accurate Clinton was part of the problem, so was Bush 41 and GWB. This is a classic example when we have civilians with no military service, get high level DoD jobs due to their academic/corporate resumes (plus prominent party activist and donator), and then they start applying private business concepts, which are great if they are tempered by battlefield conditions. Many of these nonservice bureacrats and appointed officials ignore these historical limits and are heavily influenced by PC and costs. Consequences of this type of leadership are women in combat units, gays in military, military technologies aimed at reducing the amounts of soldiers and manpower (great for fighting but useless for occupying), combat limited by lawyers, combat limited by PR limits, running military critical materials and components logistics like a Wal Mart (works if the enemy is defeated in 30 days or less, but if the war drags on, production base is strained to keep up causing shortages, and during that time you pray another major power does not attack you), fighting war on the cheap, etc, etc, and etc.
I agree 100%. My firm does small-scale government contracting, and the paperwork and all the required certifications (including the usual PC crap) is a bear to complete. We pass on a LOT of government RFPs/RFQs/smaller projects since it would literally cost us more to do the paperwork than it would to complete the project.
You’re absolutely right on all counts, man! We do a LOT of work with the Navy, which has some outstanding weapons labs such as Dahlgren and China Lake. For years though, the Admirals have had to fight rear guard actions against the very non-service bean counter types that you describe, who have wanted to shut them down completely, and turn all Navy R&D over to civilian contractors like Lockheed and Grumman, following the Air Force model. I’m not sure how long the Navy can keep their labs open though, since Dahlgren just survived a close call with BRAC 2005.
At that time, many Government employees pointed out that the Federal government would loose it expertise to handle many operational problems. Private industry loved it, since they could charge Uncle a 150% overhead rate in addition to salary and benefits. Now we see a Federal government which can’t wipe its a$$. Now the Feds screw up by the numbers. It always wasn’t like that.
There is always confusion over “Contractors” and “contractors.” The former being the company the latter being the person.
True is is hard to “fire” the company, but it is easy to replace the individual. Call up the COR (Contracting Officers Representative) and say that you want a new person by 1200. Very simple.
We had one fired, but it took about 18 months.
I know American workers wouldn’t send unrepaired vehicles, that could get troops killed, back into combat.
My brother looked out his office at his Navy base noticing 3 military contract workers taking turns all day painting one fire hydrant.
They must of been union workers.
Maybe they're using the wrong caliber.
I never saw a carrier deployment that didn’t have contractors aboard and my first one was 1982 (USS Enterprise).
What happened in the 90s was the gutting ow what support capacity we had in uniform in favor of contracting it out.
A “cost cutting” measure and part of the “peace dividend”.
All it did was increase costs, reduce efficiency, add to corruption, reduce military readiness, and make it easier for congress to bury pork...
That’s about 1/2 the number of sailors it would take...don’t forget 2 road guards and a 2nd class to supervise, and then a bunch more to do their regular jobs.
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