2010 Contractor deaths exceed military KIAs in Afghanistan

Back in September 2009, I posted about the rise in the use of civilian contractors in Afghanistan. Back then, there were twice as many contractors on the payroll of the Department of Defense serving in Afghanistan than there were soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines combined.

Since then the use of these non-military forces has continued to rise-and in 2010, DOD contractors were being killed at a faster rate than U.S. military personnel. (I can't find final numbers on the total for contractors killed there in 2010 - but as of June they were running ahead of military casualties.)

This isn't surprising since the Pentagon and the white house have proven willing to employ contractors for just about everything in the theater - not just as cooks and truck drivers, but helicopter pilots, security guards and many other positions that once would have been the exclusive domain of military presonnel. In fact, there are over 10,000 contractors in Afghanistan who have been given permits to carry firearms, and while they are prohibited by international law from engaging in "offensive operations," the line between defense and offense in the war-torn country is very hard to draw.

keep in mind that only about ten percent of the contractors hired by the Department of defense are Americans. The rest belong to a host of third-party countries, and there are also a large number of Afghans on the payroll. Some lawmakers are uncomfortable with this, claiming it represents a national security risk.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently instructed the Pentagon to cut its contractor spending by at least 10 percent across the board. But this may be harder than it looks, since nobody seems to know exactly how many contractors they actually employ. Estimates range from 250,000 to 1 million contractors are on the payroll worldwide. That's a pretty big spread.

Bottom line: Today's military cannot operate without contractors. But maybe somebody at the Pentagon should keep better track of how many are drawing a paycheck from the U.S. of A.