The Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC) is hitting the warpath – taking the Army and government contractors to task on issues ranging from lack of oversight to “risk of waste, fraud, abuse, and undermining of national objectives.” However, the Commission is ignoring the important contributions contractors make to U.S. operations.
According to the CWC, contracts for logistical support, translation, maintenance, security and other services are estimated to total $80 billion over the past five years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Services contracts for the majority of deals in Southwest Asia, and are mostly managed by the U.S. Army.
Committee Co-Chairman Michael Thibault remarked that these task orders “continue to suffer from lack of commensurate focus, oversight, and program management by government officials.”
The harsh critiques spring from the feeling that previous concerns from various sources have not been addressed over the years.
“These concerns are not new, ” said Thibault. “Department of Defense contract management has been on the Government Accountability Office’s ‘High-Risk List’ since 1992. If that designation were a person, it would be old enough to vote. Numerous GAO reports over succeeding years have added much detail to the catalog of shortcomings, including one released last month under the title, Warfighter Support: DOD Needs to Improve Its Planning for Using Contractors to Support Future Military Operations.”
The CWC also expressed interest in a shift to multi-vendor deals away from the single-vendor LOGCAP III in Iraq.
“(Another) subject that really interests us is the use of competition to motivate contractors to provide good service to the government and good value to taxpayers, ” said Thibault. “One current issue under this heading is whether the multi-vendor competition for service task orders now being used via LOGCAP IV in Afghanistan should be applied in Iraq rather than the single-vendor LOGCAP III contract. We hope and expect that the Army is considering all relevant operational, competitive, and business issues—as well as the accuracy of any base-case assumptions—in deciding how to provide for continued logistical support in Iraq.”
The CWC was formed to examine contingency contracting for reconstruction, logistics, and security functions, and to recommend improvements.
However, this intense focus on alleged “waste” in the contracting process ignores the important contributions that contractors bring to U.S. operations overseas. In an article entitled “The New Reality About U.S. Contractors, ” Dr. John Nagl and Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), write “Not a single mission in Iraq or Afghanistan has failed because of contractor non-performance. Most private contractors appear to make a positive contribution, and to be honest, patriotic, and dedicated to the mission at hand.”
Also, the private sector brings a level of efficiency not often matched by the government. Dr. James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation recently told GovConExec Magazine that “The private sector and the efficiency they bring is an asset. The most successful nations will not be the ones that don’t use contractors but will be the ones who use more contractors.”
