A Modern Mercenary

In The Modern Mercenary, Sean McFate lays bare this opaque world, explaining the economic structure of the industry and showing in detail how firms operate on the ground. A former U.S. Army paratrooper and private military contractor, McFate provides an unparalleled perspective into the nuts and bolts of the industry, as well as a sobering prognosis for the future of war. While at present, the U.S. government and U.S. firms dominate the market, private military companies are emerging from other countries, and warlords and militias have restyled themselves as private security companies in places like Afghanistan and Somalia. To understand how the proliferation of private forces may influence international relations, McFate looks back to the European Middle Ages, when mercenaries were common and contract warfare the norm. He concludes that international relations in the twenty-first century may have more in common with the twelfth century than the twentieth. This "back to the future" situation, which he calls "neomedievalism," is not necessarily a negative condition, but it will produce a global system that contains rather than solves problems.

An army veteran with deep expertise in military and international affairs makes his fiction debut with this electrifying international thriller—the first volume in a blistering hot series in the tradition of Brad Thor, Tom Clancy, and Daniel Silva. In Shadow War, an elite American mercenary on a secret mission to save a businessman’s family in Eastern Europe must navigate perilous setbacks and deadly enemies that threaten to tip the balance of power between Russia and the United States. Tom Locke is an elite warrior working for Apollo Outcomes, one of the world’s most successful private contracting firms. Pulled out of a mission in Libya, he is tapped for an unusual and risky assignment: a top secret black op in Ukraine. He is given one week to rescue an oligarch’s family and pull off a spectacular assault that could have long-lasting repercussions for this imperiled Eastern European nation and the world. What Locke doesn’t know is that the operation comes with a dangerous complication: Brad Winters. Locke’s ambitious and enigmatic boss is engaged in a secretive, high-stakes geopolitical chess game with several influential powerbrokers in capitals around the world. One misstep could cost him—and Locke—everything. While Locke has methodically planned the mission and hand-picked a team of trusted operatives to pull it off—and save his ass if things go south—he doesn’t count on running into a former love, war correspondent Alie MacFarlane, who impulsively makes a move that risks both their lives. Locke is an intelligent, iconoclastic soldier who specializes in pulling off the impossible. But all his brilliant preparation can’t prevent the kind of backstabbing and deception that could lead to catastrophe . . . and tip the balance of power toward Putin’s Russia.

Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.

For anyone who's ever considered a career as a warrior-for-hire—or who just wants to learn more about the lifestyle—How to Become a Mercenary is the ultimate guide to all the history, training, and equipment information you'll ever need! Mercenaries—who are often trained as part of the best Special Forces, including American Delta Force, British SAS, French Foreign Legion, Marines, SBS, SEALs, and many others—perform one of the most dangerous and feared jobs in the world. Their task is to go into remote locations and remove their targets by any means necessary. They are “hired hands,” and have no remorse for their actions. Now, along with Soldier of Fortune magazine, Barry Davies teaches you the training and knowledge that goes into being a mercenary, as well as the history of the profession and how it has evolved. How to Become a Mercenary will teach you everything you’ve ever needed to know about becoming a mercenary, and also how to excel at it with information on weapons, escape plans, and overall safety. You will learn: • Where and how to find work • How to understand and apply the most modern tactics • What languages to master • Which weapons are preferred • How to disappear after you’ve completed your job It’s always been about the money, but in this book, you will learn all the skills that you must acquire before you take your first job. Just remember: Article 47 of the Geneva Convention states that “a mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.” Getting caught is not an option, and in this manual, you will learn how to avoid that at all costs.

As the first decade of the twenty-first century has made brutally clear, the very definitions of war and the enemy have changed almost beyond recognition. Threats to security are now as likely to come from armed propagandists, popular militias, or mercenary organizations as they are from conventional armies backed by nation-states. In this timely book, national security expert Max G. Manwaring explores a little-understood actor on the stage of irregular warfare—the gang. Since the end of the Cold War, some one hundred insurgencies or irregular wars have erupted throughout the world. Gangs have figured prominently in more than half of those conflicts, yet these and other nonstate actors have received little focused attention from scholars or analysts. This book fills that void. Employing a case study approach, and believing that shadows from the past often portend the future, Manwaring begins with a careful consideration of the writings of V. I. Lenin. He then scrutinizes the Piqueteros in Argentina, gangs in Colombia, private armies in Mexico, Hugo Chavez’s use of popular militias in Venezuela, and the looming threat of Al Qaeda in Western Europe. As conventional warfare is increasingly eclipsed by these irregular and “uncomfortable” wars, Manwaring boldly diagnoses the problem and recommends solutions that policymakers should heed.

Since before the time of Alexander the Great trained soldiers have sold their expertise on battlefield around the World, fighting and dying in other people’s wars for money, glory or the lust for violence and combat. In this book Harry McCallion explores the development of modern mercenary forces from the British SAS led deniable operation in Yemen in late 1960’s, during which the Israelis were persuaded to arm the SAS led Yemeni tribesmen, through the bush wars in Africa, Britain’s ill fated intervention in the war in Afghanistan right up to today’s War in Ukraine. Many of the modern day British mercenaries were known to the author personally. including such notably figures as the legendary SAS Fijian warriors ‘Tak ‘ Takevesia who, although in his early sixties shot his way out of an ambush in Bagdad and Fred ‘Big Fred’ Mrafano who devoted himself to the cause of the people of Serra Leone. SAS veteran .Bill Scully who received the Queen's Gallantry Medal single-handedly protected 1,300 civilians from rebel troops during the uprising in May 199 7after the Sierra Leone coup and American Vietnam veteran Major ‘Mac’ Mackenzie, who although badly wounded in Vietnam, rose from trooper to command a Rhodesian SAS squadron and was one of the units most highly decorated soldiers. Also included are more notorious figures like Costas Georgiou also known by his alias Colonel Callan who served in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment but was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to five years in prison for a post office robbery, later he proclaimed himself a ‘Colonel’ and led a group of psychopathic mercenaries in the Angolan War of Independence, before being captured and executed by Angolan forces. The book explores the roles of modern day mercenaries, who’s use has expanded precisely because they are mercenaries, fighting for money and not love of country, their deaths are not seen as a patriotic sacrifice, often they go unreported and in turn helps to conceal the true tragic human cost of waging a war. As one former private military contractor recently stated to Australian TV “If you want to conquer in the 21st century you use mercenaries, special forces, things to keep war secret and nobody’s better at secret wars than mercenaries.”