Transforming Wartime Contracting

Over the past decade, America's military and federal-civilian employees, as well as contractors, have performed vital and dangerous tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contractors' support however, has been unnecessarily costly, and has been plagued by high levels of waste and fraud. The United States will not be able to conduct large or sustained contingency operations without heavy contractor support. Avoiding a repetition of the waste, fraud, and abuse seen in Iraq and Afghanistan requires either a great increase in agencies' ability to perform core tasks and to manage contracts effectively, or a disciplined reconsideration of plans and commitments that would require intense use of contractors. Failure by Congress and the Executive Branch to heed a decade's lessons on contingency contracting from Iraq and Afghanistan will not avert new contingencies. It will only ensure that additional billions of dollars of waste will occur and that U.S. objectives and standing in the world will suffer. Worse still, lives will be lost because of waste and mismanagement.

The U.S. military is no longer based on a Cold War self-sufficient model. Today's armed forces are a third smaller than they were during the Cold War, and yet are expected to do as much if not more than they did during those years. As a result, a transformation is occurring in the way the U.S. government expects the military to conduct operations—with much of that transformation contingent on the use of contractors to deliver support to the armed forces during military campaigns and afterwards. Contractors and War explains the reasons behind this transformation and evaluates how the private sector will shape and be shaped by future operations. The authors are drawn from a range of policy, legislative, military, legal, and academic backgrounds. They lay out the philosophical arguments supporting the use of contractors in combat and stabilization operations and present a spectrum of arguments that support and criticize emergent private sector roles. The book provides fresh policy guidance to those who will research, direct, and carry out future deployments.

Government contracting in Afghanistan and other wartime environments is different than contracting in peacetime. In peacetime, the goal of contracting is generally to obtain the good or service that is required. The measurements of success are generally getting the right good or service, on schedule, and at a fair price. In wartime, however and particularly in a counterinsurgency environment cost, schedule, and performance are often secondary to larger strategic goals of promoting security and denying popular support for the insurgency. From FY2005 through 2011, the U.S. government obligated more than $50 billion for contracts performed primarily in Afghanistan. Because a primary goal of defense contracting in Afghanistan is to support the overall mission, it is deemed essential that contracting is not only thought of as a response to immediate needs but also as part of the larger strategy. Contents of this report: (1) Introduction; (2) Wartime Contracting Versus Peacetime Contracting: Challenges of Wartime Contracting; The State of Government Contracting in Afghanistan; Current Efforts to Improve Contracting Afghanistan; The Host Nation Trucking Contract: A Case Study; (3) Issues for Congress. This is a print on demand report.

The final report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan : hearing before the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support of the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, One Hundred Twelfth Congress, first session, October 19, 2011.

In 2008 Congress established the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan (CWC) in response to increasing indications of widespread waste, fraud, and abuse in gov¿t. contracting. The CWC is charged with evaluating and reporting on America¿s wartime contracting for logistics, reconstruction, and security. This Interim Report describes the CWCs work to June 2009, which includes hundreds of meetings and briefings, analysis of existing reports and audits, hearings on Capitol Hill, and factfinding trips to the theaters of operation. This Report highlights some timesensitive issues, especially given the challenges of the drawdown in Iraq and the buildup in Afghanistan. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.