ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the historical involvement of contractors in the supply of war, the rapid increase in military outsourcing immediately after the first Gulf War in 1991. It focuses on the economic drive to reduce the cost of military support as well as the advantages to small countries of buying in skill sets instead of spending large sums of money trying to generate such skill sets themselves. It then looks at the role of military contractors in future operations, concentrating, in particular, on why governments choose to rely on them. The chapter looks at considerations that have driven government policy-makers to use contractors instead of uniformed personnel. The democratic economic imperative of the post-Second World War era has therefore reduced the breadth and scale of uniformed support capability available to the UK and US armed forces. Indigenous capability-building, that is building human capital skills in indigenous populations during a long-duration counter-insurgency campaign.
