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.
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.
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...