There are dangers, of course: as contractors, a private entity, they nonetheless represent us but without the UCMJ to control them. Whatever they do, they do in our name and the US, not the private leadership will get the blame if they screw up.
Training and proficiency are a wild card too - how much say will our government have over inept or irresponsible units?
The bigger issue is that we have gone from a "Citizen Army" filled out by a draft to include all sectors of our society, to a volunteer force which is made up of fewer than 1% of the eligible men and now includes young ladies, deviants, and even people who can't figure out what bathroom to use...now they are being supplanted by civilian hired guns and I would guess, machines, eventually.
What does that portend for our country? How much contact or involvement will the most of us have with the wars that protect us and our allies? What will happen to that thin base of experience that we have even now to know how to handles, fights, emergencies?
Anybody pay attention to that massacre in Las Vegas? If we'd had any semblance of military experience, the crowds wouldn't have packed together on the ground in a fat target - they would have sought cover, killed those spotlights that were illuminating them, found the site that pervert was shooting from and maybe a few would have gotten a weapon and engaged him.
Like the Romans before us, we are becoming comfortable cattle.
I think the US Department of State misused to some extend, via their Annex’s, the contractors for intelligence missions, rather their primary support roles. Of course I understand our Intel agencies have rent-a-players but my time in the middle east made me wonder. To a greater extent the DoS relies heavily on SF teams to keep airports and other avenues of regress, and to keep to some extend their eyes open for the evil Iran-Syrian-NK-Russian nexus (Venezuela) for fomenting the Revolution. We don’t see or hear about contractor body bags....
Erik Prince says he has a better idea -- fight terrorists with only 2,000 American Special Operations personnel, plus "a contractor force" of 6,000.
For that matter, let's ditch the 2,000 U.S. military personnel and just go with a Blackwater "contractor force" of 8,000.
And while that's going on, another "contractor force" of 8,000 from a competing contractor (let's call them Bluewater) will sign up to fight for the Taliban.
If it sounds crazy, just realize that this Erik Prince guy lists Dubai as one of his homes. And he's looking around the U.S. for a state where he can run for the U.S. Senate? This guy is a neo-con globalist right up there with the worst of them.
When a State relies on mercs to fight its wars, they are in trouble. The Mercs eventually start taking over the State.
We will regret this.
The Pashto don't want it, the Shiites don't want it, the warlords don't want it, the opium growers don't want it, etc./
Only we want it, which pushes the others into the arms of the Taliban.