On a recent Bill Moyer’s Journal program, he interviewed Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. I was surprised to hear that there are roughly 180,000 contract troops in Iraq, outnumbering the military presence, which numbers roughly 163,000.
Scahill was an extremely lucid interviewee, and I suggest that you watch this compelling interview. There’s mention that the contractor troops make a lot more money than regular troops and are typically much better equipped.
Given the size and sophistication of this force, I’m curious about the connection between contractors and geospatial intelligence. I wasn’t able to find any links online, and unfortunately am not at GeoInt this week. I’m hoping someone there can ask the question or shed some light on the interface between troops and contractors–how they share information, how they track each others location, and how they fuse intelligence between each other.
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Well, there are certainly a lot of geospatial contractors in theater, but they mostly work for the military. It is very difficult for the military to retain trained imagery and geospatial anlaysts given the pull from the contracting sector.
I’ll try and continue searching for a article I read recently. I believe it was MSNBC or Newsweek article I read.
They broke down the numbers and nationalities of the contract “soldiers”. IIRR. American contractor “soldiers” were a small number. The vast majority of the contract “soldiers” were non-American.
KoS