Kraut783
SOF Support
I have no idea, but thought I would post it up.
Blackwater placing ads in magazines
- Thread starter 48over4000
- Start date
It's all good, brother.
The name Blackwater is tainted in the PMC community. He has another company under another name hq'ed in the UAE, and it would take him all of a week to establish 10 companies in the same business, effectively when BW lost all their contracts they did a shirt swap and the same people were doing the same business.
As for pmc's taking the FID/security aspects over in Afghanistan. Mehh, whatever, don't care. It will take a company with air assets the likes of what BW had, and they might have some short gains in transitioning the country over to full Afghan control. But the end state is still the same. Once air support is gone that country falls to the Taliban within months. Even with limited air support regions will fall within months.
I can't remember the quote all that well, but something about having to kill the children's children to change the culture and win...
As for pmc's taking the FID/security aspects over in Afghanistan. Mehh, whatever, don't care. It will take a company with air assets the likes of what BW had, and they might have some short gains in transitioning the country over to full Afghan control. But the end state is still the same. Once air support is gone that country falls to the Taliban within months. Even with limited air support regions will fall within months.
I can't remember the quote all that well, but something about having to kill the children's children to change the culture and win...
Florida173
SOF Support
Isn't Blackwater under constellis? I know that the holdings company has acquired most others, including academi... Which is Blackwater from my understanding. Academi has had plenty of contracts in my industry, although they are generally low experience butts in seats types.
Constellis bought up everybody--Triple Canopy, Clayton Consulting, Academi etc--and was itself up for sale a few years ago. I don't think Constellis is partnered with this new Blackwater revival (?) ... Prince is pushing very hard for privatizing AFG with Blackwater being cited as the main beneficiary...and not much mention of other Constellis holdings.
I think that's probably true in the wider world too, accurate or not. That was the first thing I thought when I saw it- why use what's now a bad brand? I mean he renamed it in the first place.
ThunderHorse
Verified Military
Prince kept the Intellectual Property for Blackwater, so he could use it for pretty much any new venture.
Yea, I'd venture to say he was probably just the tip of the iceberg with regards to contingency funds and bribes, theft, etc.
Just look at building projects in Afghanistan. CORs were not doing their jobs and now there are multimillion dollar buildings incomplete and missing contractors.
Arguably, this is the biggest problem with contracting. I'm still baffled that the DoD doesn't know how to manage contracts after all of these years and the buttloads of money spent. People bitch about contractors and their companies, but rarely will anyone complain about the contracting office abrogating its responsibility to oversee the contract. I've seen commanders complain about a contractor and do nothing, either unaware they can or unwilling to remove them from the base. "I trust Company X will do the right thing." Company X will not offer a guy the "chicken or pasta" option, instead it will keep him in place because that's how they make money. You know this, but so many people don't; they have this silly, romantic notion a company will behave honorably. It will behave like a business that is responsible to its shareholders, no more and no less.
When the COR is absent and/ or lazy, when a commander doesn't have the backbone or knowledge to deal with a person, it emboldens the contractors and companies.
I keep telling my boss to let me go on more training trips in order to conduct contract surveillance since we don't use CORs. I'm going to tell her that the war profiteer said so.
In all seriousness, I'm all for empowering the contracting office more to do contract surveillance, but sadly we dont have the time and most importantly aren't given the resources to do it, because we all know contracting isn't a concern or a priority until something is fucked up or we don't execute timely enough. CORS are critical to the process and yet most of them are working in that capacity in as an ancillary duty.
Our COR visits once or twice a year. Maybe. Usually one of those visits is "we're in the neighborhood and wanted to pop in" kind of thing. Our "COR" is an Air Force senior NCO who attends some type of COR training. As you stated, that is an ancillary duty for him. While our CORs are generally good, some phone it in or like to focus on one area like logistics/ inventory control than our more technical aspects.
Our previous COR, I won't name the organization in the open, was pure trash. They had a rep onsite for a week every month....and they did nothing. When they did an inspection, it was half-assed one month and down to every single dot in the regs the following month. No consistency, no follow-up, just garbage "check the block" inspections. We went 3 years without them inspecting our tool program. One visit, we took an absolute beating over our tools. The PM got involved, really over-the-top stuff.
They did one more tool inspection in the 2 years before I left the contract.
Sometimes contractors aren't lazy, they don't know any better. They don't know the regs inside and out or you have a former soldier working on an Air Force program so the standard he's used to isn't the AF standard. Inspections not only serve to keep a contractor honest, but they can identify shortfalls in knowledge and experience, thus improving the program. A COR can also explain to the customer that a "shitbag" contractor isn't lazy, he's working within the confines of his contract and the customer is asking too much of them. "Manage customer expectations." CORs are absolutely vital to the contracting process, but sadly the DoD has no clue how to manage a monster that it created.
