Read Part I, II, and III:

Privatizing Defense, Part I

By Greg Guma, July 08, 2026

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Privatizing Defense, Part II: Private Equity Funding Fuels the Success of Top Contractors

By Greg Guma, July 10, 2026

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Privatizing Defense, Part III: One Leading PMC Survived by Adapting and Avoiding Exposure

By Greg Guma, July 15, 2026

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To read this article in the following languages, click the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

Today private contractors perform almost every function essential to military operations, accounting for 50 percent or more of the Department of Defense workforce deployed in active Middle Eastern conflict zones.

Executive Outcomes, a leading Private Military Contractor (PMC) in the 1990s, was disbanded after accusations that it stirred up African conflicts to win diamond concessions. But companies like Sandline International and Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) quickly picked up some of its contracts. Similarly, MPRI became embroiled in high-profile lawsuits over labor and whistleblower charges. As defense markets shifted and mergers progressed, MPRI’s assets were absorbed into broader defense portfolios or divested.

For decades DynCorp avoided such public embarrassment. In Ecuador, however, where it developed military logistics centers and coordinated “anti-terror” police training, the exposure of a secret covenant it signed with the Aeronautics Industries Directorate of the Ecuadorian Air Force briefly threatened to make waves. According to an exposé in Quito’s El Comercio, the arrangement, hidden from the National Defense Council, made DynCorp’s people part of the US diplomatic mission.

In Colombia, DynCorp’s coca eradication and search-and-rescue missions led to controversial pitched battles with rebels. US contract pilots flew Black Hawk helicopters carrying Colombian police officers who raked the countryside with machine gun fire to protect the missions against attacks. According to investigative reporter Jason Vest, DynCorp employees were also implicated in narcotics trafficking. But such stories usually didn’t circulate far. In any case, DynCorp’s “trainers” could ignore congressional rules, including those that restricted the US from aiding Colombian military units linked to human rights abuses.

Announcing the Computer Science Corporation / DynCorp acquisition (see Part One), Van B. Honeycutt, CSC chairman and CEO, said that the goals were to “strengthen our leadership position in the US federal marketplace, augment our capabilities to support the requirements of the new Homeland Security Department and respond to the federal government’s initiative to increase its reliance on service providers.” It was a timely move. In April 2003, just a month after the deal was completed, DynCorp won a multimillion-dollar contract to build a private police force in post-Saddam Iraq, with some of the funding diverted from an anti-drug program for Afghanistan.

As Honeycutt clearly understood, war was straining the government’s resources, but also rapidly accelerating the privatization of military operations. One estimate, cited by Nelson Schwartz in Fortune magazine, noted that 8 percent of the Pentagon’s total 2003 budget went to private companies. Twenty years later, about 54 percent goes to the private sector, a massive transfer of wealth. The Pentagon’s big four are currently Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon) General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, which oversees Vinnell Corporation, a leading PMC.

In early 2004, the State Department expanded DynCorp’s role as a global US surrogate with a $1.75 billion, five year contract to provide law enforcement personnel for civilian policing operations in “post-conflict areas” around the world. The company also got a $406 million Army contract to support UH-1 and AH-1 helicopters sold to foreign countries. The work, described as “turnkey” services, included program management, logistics support, maintenance and aircrew training, aircraft maintenance and refurbishment, repair and overhaul of aircraft components and engines, airframe and engine upgrades, and the production of technical publications. Meanwhile, CSC was given $60 million to assist the Air Force’s Information Warfare Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for the next five years.

DynCorp was eventually acquired by government services contractor Amentum, a massive global engineering and technology “solutions partner” for the US, its allies and commercial clients, and began operating as a subsidiary. Worth at least $5 billion, Amentum has about 53,000 employees and operates in at least 80 countries, according to the corporate website.

The unusual thing is that Amentum was founded in 2019, less than a year before the DynCorp deal. Beginning in 2020, Dyncorp’s legacy of global logistics and aviation maintenance were absorbed, while it continued to provide “mission-critical services” for the Department of Defense, intelligence agencies, and international partners.

Four years later, Amentum merged with Jacobs Solutions (a global engineering, construction, and scientific consulting company with 60,000 employees) and acquired other cyber & intelligence businesses. That created the massive, publicly traded government technology and advanced engineering services business listed as AMTM on the New Stock Exchange. The merging of military and business interests had reached another level.

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Integral Role or Corporatist Takeover?

Despite all evidence to the contrary, most governments still don’t admit to using mercenaries. Yet private contractors perform almost every function essential to military operations, what the UK Financial Times once called a “creeping privatization of the business of war.” In the first Gulf War, about two percent of US personnel were contractors. In 2003, it was 10 percent, and the Pentagon employed more than 700,000 private contractors.

Now private military and civilian contractors typically account for 50 percent or more of the overall Department of Defense (DOD) workforce deployed in active Middle Eastern conflict zones. While exact percentages fluctuate, data from operations in the region shows contractors frequently outnumber uniformed personnel.

It’s a symbiotic relationship, beneficial for both parties but creating serious challenges for democracy. It is also a warning sign. Under fascism, the merging of government and corporate interests is formally institutionalized through an economic system called Corporatism, which pushes economic production that serves national, political or personal goals.

In other words, it drives the military-industrial complex by aligning the state’s security goals with corporate profit motives. This accelerates arms races, influences foreign policy to protect corporate interests, and leads to the privatization of logistics, intelligence, and combat operations in modern conflicts. Even Libertarian Ron Paul has condemned the corporatist drift, arguing that Government “investment” in private companies “means government control. So, the ‘beneficiaries’ of government support will be forced to make decisions based on political considerations.”

In recent times, partnerships between the government and major technology or aerospace corporations have driven rapid innovation in weaponry — from drone warfare to cybersecurity and AI. It has advanced military capabilities. But private interests can also leverage power over how and when these technologies are deployed in war zones.

In 1969, the US Army had about 1.5 million active duty soldiers. By 1992, the figure had been cut by half. After that, however, as the US mobilized militarily to intervene in several significant conflicts, a corporate “foreign legion” filled the gap between foreign policy imperatives and what a downsized, increasingly over-stretched military could provide. Although the number of active duty troops later climbed back a bit, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s desire to make US forces lighter and more agile helped to accelerate the long-term trend.

Use of high technology equipment fed the process. Private companies had technical capabilities that the military needed, but didn’t possess. Contractors maintained the B2 stealth bomber and F-117 stealth fighter, and operated some of the newer weapons systems, such as the Global Hawk and Predator unmanned drones. Military systems like new Marine trucks and the Army’s Guardrail surveillance aircraft were specifically designed to be operated and maintained by private companies.

“The private sector must play an integral role in improving our national cybersecurity,” claimed CSC’s Guy Copeland in 2005. He began developing public-private IT policy in the Reagan years, and drafted much of the language in the Bush plan as co-chair of the Information Security Committee of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). So he knew that private interests owned and operated 85 percent of the nation’s critical IT infrastructure.

In Britain, the debate over military privatization was public and sensitive. In the late 1990s, the activities of the UK company Sandline in Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea publicly embarrassed the British government. But no country has clear policies to regulate PMCs, and the limited oversight that does exist rarely works. In the US, they have largely escaped notice, except when US contract workers in conflict zones are misbehaving, kidnapped or killed.

As the federal government becomes more and more dependent on private companies for so many key security services — not to mention military logistics, management, strategy, expertise and “training” — fundamental parts of US defense have been outsourced or absorbed. It looks less like an “integral role” than a Corporatist takeover.

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Greg Guma is a Vermont writer, former editor, and author of 15 books, including Managing Chaos: Adventures in Alternative Media. Visit the author’s blog. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

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