Video: Erik Prince Lecture at the Oxford Union

I listened to the video, and he makes the same points other military contractors have made on the utility and cost savings associated with using contractors to pursue some government security objectives. No issues with most of his claims. He suggested listeners watch the YouTube video on the Somalia Project as an example of the great work contractors / mercenaries are doing. I paid for it and watched it, and I think Eric would have done himself a favor if he didn’t recommend it. It is mostly narrated by a former Special Forces LTC who is a little too in love with himself and melodramatic. I studied war my whole life, bla, bla, and now I’m going to Somalia to see the new way of war to gain a better understanding of how it is waged. Unfortunately, the so called war was a few contractors training a Somali force to conduct counter-piracy operations (target them on land principally). The contractors had six weeks I believe to train a bunch of conscripts, so you get you get what you get. Watching them on a couple of operations it was a complete cluster, although not much different than you would see if you employed American recruits after six weeks of training. A far cry from the professional results I saw MPRI produce in Africa and the Balkans. A further cry from the African forces trained by Special Forces. This gets to my point on other posts about the State Department desiring to maintain the lead for training security forces. The problem is they have to default to contractors of mixed professional and have limited capacity to provide oversight. Contractors will always be part of the battlefield, and they will always provide cost effective and politically acceptable options to the government to address some problems. But they will not replace a professional military.