Working with Civilian Workers

I get tired of seeing school trained Soldiers cutting grass while civilian contractors that are paid 4-10 times as much do the job those Soldiers were trained to do.  If a green suiter can do it, toss the blue suiters out.

Food for thought.  A sad and gut wrenching truth. suicide FAR outweighs combat related casualties. You stage thousands of people that answered the call to serve and protect their country in a wasteland for months (or years) to work 80-100+ hours a week. Strip them of any semblance of freedom and on top of that, proffer a yearly salary that is laughable at best...Eventually when all shreds of morale are dead and gone; one's own psyche starts to erode and shatter. What returns is hollow shells of the people they once were. PTSD is now prevalent (I don't believe it's PTSD, I think it's boredom induced psychosis + sporadic flaring of , but I don't think anyone can say they left a deployment feeling refreshed and enlightened. I'd say most leave with the same mindset of "Well, at least that shit's over with." Only to find out after their RnR they already have another tasking set for a date sooner than they expected. 
That's a complete ass drop for  what remnants of morale. remained You tell a 10-20 man team of contractors they're going in to the mouth of the abyss but will be paid $800-$1600 a day for 90 on 21 off cycles and they'll be replaced immediately if they can't hack it. Who's going to bring the most tenacity and controlled chaos to the battlefield? 

Sorry for the long read everyone but,
         Everyone has valid points concerning contractors, but don't forget about the other side of the fence; the majority of combative contractors are veterans. 1. Not only is this one of the few opportunities for veterans once released back into the mundane monotony of the civilian world where their skills actually transfer towards a job that provides a decent pay, 2. they also (or at least used to) have specific expedited missions that entire units can't act quickly enough to accomplish due to the stranglehold of the chain of command/ lack of communication/ failure to reach a logical decision expediently/ etc. 3. They are the only viable scapegoats when the Geneva standards are completely absurd, 4. They're legally allowed to meet potential violence with overwhelming violence. I stumbled across an older contractor in Iraq back in 08 who was originally (incredible random) from Orlando, FL. About a mile and a half from where I grew up. His crew requested departure from Balad (I'm sure they got paid a lot for this) to augment us at Camp Adder when we started getting our asses kicked by the Al Qaeda cell that attended terrorist daycare camp with Iranian Spec Ops. They broughtf five or six Apaches with them. Prior, the attacks started to become more prevalent and more intense. Since we were surrounded by flat land, they just launched katyusha rockets at us. They usually came in volleys of 3-6; and it was more or less a joke to the higher ups. How ever one day we got bombarded by about 20-30 rockets at dawn (during prayer, which is generally unheard of). The rockets never bothered me since the chances of being blasted by a 100 year old black market, unguided katuysha is about the same as being bit by a shark in the middle of the desert while being struck by lightning; how ever, they did manage to take the lives of several poor souls riding through the main gate at the exact wrong place, wrong time. I think war is an absolute necessity for peace to exist because people will fight among themselves if they don't have a common entity to direct their hatred at. Anyway, I digress, the Apaches came in, refueled and took off immediately in absolutely orchestral synchronicity. It looked straight out of a movie. The contractors were the definitive of "SHIT HOT!", and didn't skip a beat. These guys were dedicated ass kickers that came with the soul intent of defending and enacting vengeance for their fellow patriots. I listened all day as the Apaches (from 10 miles away from Nasiriyah) while these guys wrought absolute carnage on all responsible for the attack. A coordinated attack that would have taken weeks for back office to reach a decision on, and receive approval. The way things were in Iraq during my tour in layman terms; the actual military was the foundation for a fortress, the TCNs did the tasks everyone would bitch and complain about (like sweeping rocks, bagging sandbags, and cleaning the "caddilacs" to an absolute immaculate state. And the contractors were the righteous fists of fury ready to deploy within moments notice. Our ROE's were so completely f'd; we were told that we had to not only be fired upon first, but the attack had to be directed at you, personally, and (common sense) you had to be able to readily identify those attacking you. I was an Air Force MP (Security Forces, I know, I know, *farttttttttt*) and one of the only goons qual'd with a 203, tasked to augment the 82nd's MP's because they were stretched too thin. We trained to augment their convoys even though we were as poorly trained as possible, and were outfitted in the finest of Nam' gear. I was issued a ruck that spanned the entire career of defender "Smith" from A1C to his promo to Master Sgt, and our mission was fragged as soon as boots hit the ground from convoy tag-alongs to flightline fobbits. Due to poor/non-existent contact between the UDMs, our two squads relieved four. We were overworked, exhausted, undermanned, and going stir crazy from manning one man posts non-stop without ever being able to return a single round. The helo-contractors were like Valkyries of vengeance. Even though all we could do was listen and occasionally watch the carnage unfold during a clear day sans sandstorm; it was the biggest morale boost knowing that these guys came to rip Nasiriyah asunder; even if we weren't allowed to leave our posts. It was one of the few saving graces that kept my sanity in check while repeating groundhogs day for a mission we never wanted. They were always really nice guys. They would tell you to go ahead of them in the chow hall line, give you the last pack of smokes at the BX, and would literally drop everything if they got called for a mission. I have a devout respect for them. I've heard nightmares of completely incompetent, fat, lazy, contractor slobs; but these guys were the spitting image of what a militant should emulate. Cool, calm, empathetic operators that happened to be straight killers when duty called. 
         If you trace back far enough, you'll see that contractors used to be the most competent professionals around. Made up of individuals from any NATO nation that could problem solve without the constraint of the chain of command or ROE as expediently as possible in the most dire of circumstances. I was planning on a looking for a private or DV security contract on a 365 to Afghan until the pay for contractors got cut in half and I became absolutely obsessed with the Non-Profit I started. I'm not asking for hand out from anyone, just offering my 2 cents.

Mike (SrA Waldo)
http://www.OperationNewBeginning.com and/or "like" at
http://www.facebook.com/OperationNewBeginning
Of course I could be totally mistaken, but the standard "blitzkrieg" protocol of contractors seems to be a lot more cost effective and efficient than dropping 10,000 angry bullet shields 5,000 miles away from home for 7-12 month stents with nothing to do, and the only freedom being that inside of their own minds. 

You've hit one of my nerves here…I was a young 88M back in the day…and saw this almost daily.  We would go down to the motor pool to PMCS our trucks and lube the same grease points 50 times…while civilian rigs would come load up equipment and take them to the paint shop, other installations, etc.  Would always make us wonder why they wouldn't just use the 88Ms and their 915s that were just 'hanging out' in the motor pool.

While I agree in some aspects about working with civilians....and I got sued by them! There is a need for them while the military has a manpower cap. If we limit the military to a set number, either missions do not get done, or we use some of the hundreds of civilians. I do not know when we did not have civilians. Geo Washington used civilians. There is non-trigger pulling jobs. Those should go to civilians. Non-deployable jobs, why have soldiers doing that? The whole I idea of the military is to deploy and fight. If the position is not doing that, why put a soldier in it. Bde Commander's Garrison Secretary....Does anyone think that position should be a soldier? (How would you like to go to Ranger school and be the BDE Cdr secretary!)

Never liked having civilians do any military job. In some instances it meant that an enlisted shore billet just got removed. The Coast Guard started to pit civilians in operational jobs like search and rescue coordinator. All that did was take away a shore billet for an operations rating and cause problem with the cahin of command, because their watch schedule had to revolve around a 40 hour week with no overtime. I could work my active duty guys as much as necessary, but no OT for the overpaid civilian. I was very vocal about this when the idea was proposed. Too many of the folks in favor of it were looking for a post CG guarenteed job.

I prefer to have military working with military, with limited civilians.

Many times they *claim* to be saving the government money, but in study after study, they really aren't, after all they're in their businesses to *make* money, and in many instances, the quality of products or services received depreciates.

I came into the Air Force almost 30 years ago. I retired and now work as an AF civilian. I can tell from experience that it isn’t just the system but the people that exploit it. I have worked with civilians all over the world. Just like on active duty, we have both ends of the scale, stellar performers and dead weight. The main difference is with the active duty personnel sooner or later those folks HAVE to leave. No matter how much they try to hide eventually, they are out.
On the civilian side, they can linger in one place. As long as they stay quiet and do not cause any problems, they become invisible. These few malingerers give the rest of us a bad name.