Book Description

Since the Cold War, the U.S. and UK armed services have undergone significant transformation in response to the radically altered threat environment, new operational demands, and reduced defense budgets. Central to this transformation in both states is an expanded role for private contractors in providing deployed support functions traditionally conducted by uniformed personnel. Despite the similar direction of military reform, the U.S. armed services' approach to battlefield outsourcing has undergone extensive public scrutiny and debate, whereas UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) initiatives have hitherto attracted comparatively little independent assessment. Close U.S.-UK military cooperation over recent years in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the likelihood that both states will remain close allies in future interventions, suggest that the UK MoD's approach to deployed contractor support is a salient issue for U.S. military planners. This monograph analyses the MoD's outsourcing strategy and identifies those aspects of UK policy and doctrine that warrant consideration by the Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. armed services. The monograph surveys the evolution and content of the MoD's "public private partnership" program. This reveals the scale and scope of MoD initiatives to date, and the managerial, operational, and technological factors that have shaped the MoD's approach to organizing and managing private sector involvement. It also surveys why, despite the DoD's and MoD's widespread use of contractors on deployed operations, military outsourcing remains a controversial aspect of defense policy in the United States and UK. The DoD and MoD have been keen to articulate the financial and operational gains that the private sector can provide. Correspondingly, this "government orthodoxy" has been under sustained attack from those critics claiming the UK and U.S. armed services have gone "too far" with ideologically motivated privatization policies, and others who argue they have done "too little" to harness private sector capacity. The utility of this survey of claims and counterclaims is that it generates testable hypotheses against which the financial and operational performance of MoD and DoD outsourcing policies can be evaluated. Evaluation of the performance of MoD outsourcing policy and doctrine against these testable hypotheses reveals two broad observations. On the one hand, the MoD has developed a number of novel command and control mechanisms that have succeeded in rationalizing and removing the risk in commercial battlefield support. On the other, the data necessary to evaluate the real impact of deployed outsourcing have yet to enter the public domain. Despite internal MoD reforms intended to ensure in-house and contractor alternatives are assessed on a "level playing field," limited information has emerged on how this works in practice. Similarly, questions remain about the relative cost-effectiveness of organic military provision and contractor alternatives, and whether purported savings from contracting out are actually being reinvested in additional front line capability. Moreover, the MoD confronts a range of personnel issues before it can optimize the management of deployed contractor assets and ensure that outsourcing does not erode military cohesion. Comparative analysis indicates that there are no fundamental differences in overarching MoD and DoD outsourcing philosophy. To the extent that variations do exist, this reflects differing national military structures, contractual practices and legal frameworks within which deployed contractor support has been engaged. Despite the similarities in overall approach, the analysis points to specific MoD initiatives that could enhance the U.S. armed services' ability to manage their deployed contractor support.