Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiFor Sale: High-Tech, Lethal Weapons
Private military companies are expanding their offerings to clients with the latest in high-tech weapons
Since the 11 September terrorist attacks, private military companies (PMCs) have dramatically expanded in number, eager to market and sell their services to governments, multinational corporations, NGOs and other clients.
Companies such as Control Risks Group can gather business intelligence for a firm wishing to open its doors in a hostile region or instruct an NGO on how to respond to employee abduction. Erinys International can guard an oil pipeline or train a domestic force to guard the entire infrastructure. In the event of an attack, CSS Alliance can deploy a team of professionals to respond to medical emergencies.
But while the services offered by such private companies differ, each relies primarily on the physical manpower required to gather intelligence or facilitate a private security operation. However, there is another group of PMCs advertising their own patented, high-tech weapons to many of the same aforementioned clients.
Some companies manufacture large-scale military equipment, like Blackwater's GRIZZLY Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) - a 22-foot long (6.7 meters), 15-tonne heavily armored land vehicle able to transport up to 10 people and resist "projectiles up to .50 caliber and to provide an IED-survivable envelope." Manufactured at Blackwater's Moyock, North Carolina compound, the GRIZZL is equipped with a roof turret designed to mount a 12.7mm machine gun, a feature that is undoubtedly attractive to militaries possessing such a weapon.
While the vast majority of the private military and security industry is made up of US and UK companies, there are explicit differences between the two. The GRIZZLY is symbolic of the US industry, often characterized by heavy-duty, lethal military equipment. The UK industry is in many ways softer, characterized by less lethal security technologies.
For example, Universal Guardian of London recently patented the Cobra Stunlight, a specialized flashlight equipped with a targeting laser and firing spout able to shoot a "debilitating pepper stream up to 20 feet." The company sold the product exclusively to domestic police forces, but currently the device is available on the commercial market.
Private sector integral to US defense
"Unlike US companies, British companies do not want to be seen as private military companies as this might scare away potential corporate clients. On the contrary, the larger US companies consider themselves as something like force multipliers of US grand strategy: Their services are aimed at bolstering US operations overseas," Dr Sabrina Schulz, a London-based consultant and expert on the UK private security industry, told ISN Security Watch.
"In the US, the private sector has become not only a 'tolerated' or 'accepted' part of US defense policy - its role is increasing because the US desires and welcomes private sector involvement."
While large defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman usually receive the vast majority of their annual earnings from government contracts, some private military and security companies are now marketing and advertising unique products to both government and nongovernmental clients.
"Larger US companies can rely on government contracts for 90, if not more, percent of their business - only about 10 percent are generated through contracts with other businesses. In the UK, this ratio is the reverse. UK companies cater mostly for other private companies, amounting to roughly 90 percent of their turnover," Shulz told ISN Security Watch.
From a 6-meter armored tank to a 32-centimeter pepper-spraying flashlight, the two largest military and security industries are able to meet the needs of almost any customer. But as with any maturing industry, so comes competition.
Another firm, Canada-based SkyLink Security makes no hesitation in advertising its hi-tech products for identity screening, explosive and weapons detection and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance. SkyLink describes itself as a "one-stop shop of Homeland Security services for both government and civilian customers."
The company offers the BioFinger, a "single chip that can read a fingerprint from a live finger or printed image and verify [its] authenticity." The chip also identifies pulse waves in the finger, registering "information about heart rate, blood pressure, blood consistency, vascular and nervous system status of any given person."
SkyLink also features VibraLie, an image scanning system that records vibrations of the human face, making the product the world's "first-ever contact-less passenger screening technology."
Another private military company, the Golan Group, was founded in 1983 by ex-Israeli Special Forces personnel. The company provides a range of specialized military and security solutions, among which include executive protection, maritime security and facilities security, security training, business and civil intelligence gathering and crisis management. Golan Group is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, operates throughout Israel and is present in over 20 countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
The company offers an amazingly unique product called the CornerShot Weapon System. As the name suggests, the system allows the attachment of most handguns used by US, UK and Israeli Special Forces for the ability to aim and fire around corners, thereby shielding the user from oncoming fire.
The system uses a series of lights and lasers which transmit images to a small video screen built just in front of the trigger device, allowing soldiers or law enforcement personnel the ability to view and aim at targets completely out of the line of sight. Costing upwards of US$5,000, the CornerShot eventually became so popular that the company manufactured two other product lines of the system, one to fit 40mm grenade and tear gas launchers and another to fit small-scale assault rifles.
These types of weapons began to emerge in the marketplace as combat operations transitioned into urban environments in which the strategic atmosphere has become multi-dimensional and angular. The Golan Group markets the weapons system as a necessary tool in such combat.
Innovative or inefficient?
The question remains as to whether these types of gadgets - no matter how fascinating - are truly effective. There is simply a lack independent research that could reveal the accuracies or fail rates of systems similar to Golan's CornerShot or SkyLink's identification technologies. The private sector clearly has an interest in selling these innovations, which are, however, often untested or unverified by independent study.
The UAV, which has been marketed by the private sector to militaries and large defense contractors, has been reviewed. A December 2005 study by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that costs of the UAV outweighed the effectiveness of its missions. The report said that the UAVs purchased by the Department of Defense from the private sector "cannot easily transmit and receive data with other communication systems because they are not interoperable." In this sense, compatibility issues with other military equipment create a downside in purchasing from the private sector.
As national governments become more reliant on the private sector to provide security solutions, private companies which have little or no previous military or security background will increasingly be burdened with the responsibility of creating products that are both compatible with existing military equipment and do not interfere with current operational practices.
"One of the problems that start-ups have in offering equipment innovations to the military is that they do not understand military requirements or how to communicate with the military very well," Dr Eugene Gholz, co-author of Buying Transformation: Military Innovation and the Defense Industry, told ISN Security Watch.
"There's a lot of jargon, specialized military expertise and bewildering variety of organizations connected to military operations and acquisition. That jumble makes sense to people steeped in the military environment, including many service-providing PMCs, but it is totally unfamiliar to scientists and business entrepreneurs who might have an idea that might help the military."
When it comes to military technology, an interesting paradox has been born from the government-business relationship. While it is fair to question whether militaries or police forces should approach private military companies for these types of technologies in the first place, it is also fair to make the argument that these militaries and police forces should do business only with those companies with a good deal of relevant and qualified experience in their fields.
Jody Ray Bennett is an ISN Security Watch correspondent based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
© 2008 ISN Security Watch (Switzerland)
40 Comments so far
Show AllAllow the growth of mercenaries as Blackwater, and their now evident documented arms dealings, then allow the selling of their services and arms as packages, like when you get bundled software with a computer. (I know that doesn't happen very often, anymore.) So what happens when a country that is happy to do business decides to call in it's $6 trillion loan and in order to do this secretly begins contracting these mercenaries and buying all their armament and supplying more. Then after they have their ducks in a row, this imaginary country suddenly DEMANDS payment? There is the future. No nuclear war. The wealth is long gone as is the power structure. Besides, no one is insane enough to nuke the world over $6 trillion measly bucks.
So, Americans become citizens of another political power and we work for either .16 cents an hour, 14 hours a day or $1.00 a day for 12 hours. We pump out Fords, Chevys, Nikes ad nauseum just like the rest of the world. Sure, owners have changed, but the standard of living was shifted as were the salaries for intellectual, creative, engineering capable people, who themselves are being stripped of their hard work, copyrighted and patented by their hiring corporations just like in this country. In fact, it is the same families that ran everything here. Only now their cut isn't as large.
I mean, people will do anything to survive.
dc McD,
No apology necessary. You have outwitted me and shown that I am merely an impersonator of Clark Kent. Curses!
In all seriousness, I don't espouse the free-market Libertarian ideas about PMCs I stated earlier. I meant to make satire of the free-market argument, but apparently missed the mark, perhaps because reality has surpassed satire. Corporate personhood is a crock and should be repealed. There should be a death penalty for corporations, particularly ones that provide murder services, overtly like Blackwater or covertly like Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and their ilk.
Sorry about my earlier trollish reply.
re Jim Glover July 30th, 2008 2:34 am
who writes "Now as you just said if voting 3rd party will not change anything, why vote?
Obama is very different than McCain and the world knows it so if you don't want to use your vote to stop McCain,
You will deserve him if he wins."
my first impulse was to say simply BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY!!! and let it go, but i'll answer your question with the seriousness i would hope to receive.
i vote because it's the bare minimum required of a citizen in a democracy. i vote because it's how i indicate my preference as to what kind of government i want, both for myself and for posterity. i vote, if for no other reason, then to show the bastards that i'm still alive and paying attention. i don't vote AGAINST, i vote FOR.
now please tell me why you vote?
laffingbear
Marshal law is in place now. When it gets full speed CD and the rest won't be on the internet.
=============================================
Canada is the new test bed 2010 Bell and Rogers are putting in place the internet just like TV where you have to BUY a package that web sites have to join and pay the (IP), Bell etc a fee. No more wild sites that tell the truth just lock step right wing news. I guess we will be back to smoke signals and the HAM radio or CB
Hazmat,
Obama is not saying he will continue to use them without change he said he would not rule out using them when he starts in 09, because Bush has screwed it all up so much, he may have to use them but he will be replacing them with US military as soon as they are trained for the roles that the mercenariess are doing now.
He is also going to have them accountable to US law and to Iraq law... this is not as you say "indistingushable from McCain", but a very rational approach.
He is stating a change in course and ending the war in Iraq and now Iraq agrees with Obama not McCain.
"Obama campaign and Senate staffers characterize this as an inherited problem with no good alternatives. "We are in a situation where, because of bad planning and a series of disastrous policy choices by the Bush Administration, we're forced to rely on private security contractors," says the senior adviser. "What we're focused on at the moment is getting the legal architecture in place that will hold these guys accountable to the same standard that [applies to] enlisted US military personnel."
Now as you just said if voting 3rd party will not change anything, why vote?
Obama is very different than McCain and the world knows it so if you don't want to use your vote to stop McCain,
You will deserve him if he wins.
Clark Kent -
2 things.
As a Superman afficianado, I thought you'd recognize 'Great Caesar's Ghost' as the incredulity phrase used by Daily Planet editor, Perry White, in the 1950's Superman TV series, everytime Jimmy Olson said something stupid.
My heated response to your earlier morally unhinged idea wasn't meant to insult you personally -- well may be a little. Anyway, apologies if I unjustly hurt your feelings. You do draw good comics.
yes, "armaments" and health care-- shoot 'em up, ka-ching, patch 'em up, ka-ching!
Reminds me of the film "The Graduate"... dad's post college graduation career advice was, "plastics".
Today, if you're looking for a job with money I've got a word for you, "armaments"
The development of this weaponry, let's remember, is not going to be for naught. Weapons manufacturers and security firms know well that conventional warfare has come to an end. Rich countries are not going to fight each other, that would lead to total destruction. Thus, what we see in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Palestine, are laboritories for the future of warfare, namely in urban environments. Obama and McCain have promised us not only a continuation of the current wars, but also future wars, though not "dumb" wars, meaning wars that cost us too much, which Obama decries. This generation of wars are going to be wars in nations considered as "failed states," meaning anywhere where "American interests" are threatened. If the Cold War was the war against Third World popular democracy dressed in the propagandic guise of countering Soviet "evil," then the coming years we are going to be more war against the South in the guise of fighting "Islamic extremism" and "failing states." The US may be economically teetering on the brink of oblivion (bankruptcy), but the US has been weakened economically since the mid- 70's, and the US will continue to rely on its comparative advantage to serve the dominant sectors of society, namely brutal military force.
With extra nuts.
dc McD,
You openly cast aspersions about my sanity and yet you're the one who rants about the ghosts of deceased Roman emperors.
You place a great value on Reason. I invite you to meet with Mr. Erik Prince, the founder and CEO of Blackwater (I wonder if he's any relation to Machiavelli Prince?) and explain to him that his company has no right to exist. If possible, I'd like to go with you and video the discussion.
Your case depends on Reason trumping armaments and that the "pen" is mightier than the sword.
To which I say, "Good luck with that!"
It is only armaments that can critique both itself and reason and never reason alone that can critique armaments.
P.S. You also imply in your posting that Superman is less than sane. It's been my privilege to cover Superman for the Daily Planet on a few occasions, and nothing about his words or deeds strikes me as anything less than fully competent.
P.P.S. I'll take my looney cake prize with German chocolate frosting please.
re Jim Glover July 29th, 2008 12:07 pm
from the first paragraph of the article whose link you providied:
"A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not "rule out" using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009..."
you're right, he's not silent on this issue. indistinguishable from mccain, but not silent.
i never said voting third party would solve anything. but it signifies that i for one do not give my consent to the bipartisan lurch toward corporatist rule. voting against mccain (by voting for obama) signifies your consent to obama's stated policies, including the continued use of mercenaries.
walking ,sickly, advertising kiosks, resplendent in the latest "must have" rags or baubles that bear the almighty "logo", eyes glazed over from MSM propaganda flashing at us from a thousand screens, we can barely haul our corpulent fat asses to the kitchen, to pop a "snack" into the microwave, during the commercial break in the non ending commercials that pass a entertainment... yet some still think there is a chance for the west...
simplify.
learn to do with less
do not buy anything unless it is a need
do not drive unless no alternative is available
plant a garden, get to know a local farmer
TURN OFF the TV
when you get out of the race, it becomes ever so clear why all the real "news" is bad.
It's all about the money. Some day there won't be any other species left on the planet except these boys who still get a kick out of killing and the former US and UK and USSR still looking for another country to raid and destroy.
Obama is silent on this issue?...... Obama's Mercenary Position http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/28/7341/
Obama is still alive too.
But since he is still alive and thus cannot be trusted we should all vote third party and all issues can be solved..
It has been revealed by many posters here that when you vote 3rd party, all issues are solved including the ones Obama is silent on.
But for that to happen every issue and story on Common Dreams must be blamed on Obama and we must continue to keep telling readers that these problems will be solved if they just vote 3rd party!!!
Agreed? lets keep it up~ after all McSame couldn't be as bad as these phony progressives think.
When marshal law is declared guess who the police force will be.
H'm, makes you wonder how much of the world chaos these companies are helping to foment just to drum up business for their products.
Clark Kent -
Your free market idea to beat back private military companies by outcompeting them with a counterforce of humanist, service-oriented companies takes today's looney cake prize.
It's an non-sane solution, which in this case comes from blindly forcing yourself to think inside a provably flawed ideological box without the aid of supervening reason.
Non-sane, because it sees human reason's ability to solve problems caused by rigid human ideologies, like Libertarianism, as subservient to and captive of that ideology; when, clearly, it is only reason that can critique both itself and ideology and never ideology alone that can critique ideology.
The received truths of your seemingly logical Libertarain ideology bear no necessary relation to the operation of Reason in the human mind -- no matter Any Rand's attempt to equate the two in her forulation of Objectivism. Reason is not bound to shut up at irresolvable contradictions posited by ideologies that violate common sense and/or natural law --which your 'solution' surely does violate.
Private market interests should no more be able to freely own and sell nuclear weapons, for example, than they should able to freely own and sell the services of armies. Human beings have universally acknolwedged, natural rights to life, liberty, and property only so long as those agencies which can threaten these rights remain at a reasonably one-to-one human scale. Where they can not and do not remain at human scale, the charterted province of representative, civil government is instituted to provide collective controls.
Thus, the way to undo the development of private armies is not to pretend they have an objective right to exit due to the ideology of market economics. Their owners have no such right. Private military companies' very existence violates the civil contract between a free people and the common government they 'hire' (if you will) to protect them against such unnatural, out of scale accretions of private power. {the USSC's allowance of de facto Corporate Personhood is very much part of this problem, and though 'legal,' is clearly incommensurate with both the intent of the constitution and the Enlightenment's understanding of accountable, human-scale natural law on which the constitution is based.)
Thus, way do undo these PMC's entities, is to render them, along with corporate personhood, specifically constitutionally proscribed, thru deeper personal and political consciousness.
Your solution -- that millions of us should quickly become human service-dedicated, Buddha-driven entrepeneurs simply in order to thwart the immediate threat of unnaturally empowered sociopaths who own PMC's, may sound noble theoretically, but it is not reasonable, to say the least.
To say more: it is non-sane solution.
To say more still: It lacks all historical and creaturely self-reflection, and in fact borders on in-sanity.
I'm sure you're not insane, Clark Kent (though your implied Superman alia is not exactly reasssuring.)
Why not just grow up (just a little bit) - and get out of your Kryptonite ideology box?
The real world needs timely, practical, human solutions to this problem. Not more un-natural hyper-capitalist superman delusions -- which delusions, after all, are arguably what have brought humanity to this presently perilous predicament.
To essential recap: the Libertarian ideology that anyone and everyone should be free to use and market violent weapons just as they please, including raising and hiring-out private military companies for personal profit, isn't even implied in the constitution.
Great Ceasar's Ghost.
How many MPG for that GRIZZLY? I bet it outperforms the Prius!
This is the basic problem with untethered markets which the so called Reagan revolution brought us. Once again, that will teach America to elect an actor. You don't need to know anything just read from a script and look convincing.Thats the problem with Bush-lite he can't read from a script and he sure ain't convincing.
One of my big fears is that it may be to late to put the Gennie back in the bottle we call regulation. I'm of the mind that the only possible chance is a total denigration of the economic system and to start all over. Just fear what will happen to the earth, with what would surly be a blood bath as a result.
All the above brought to you by greed, one of the deadly sins,where was the church, I say parenthetically, getting hers I guess.
Stand and watch and do nothing to change. For you are nothing but weak, timid and frightened almost useless inconsequential cogs of the capitalist consumer society. Your understanding of the machine and your function within renders you what...an interchangeable part. Where do you place your allegiance... to the machine? Right and wrong no longer matters, only power and force. What rules and laws are there that you still follow? And those who lead you, what about them? Privatize the goverment, your armed forces, your intelligence services, your water systems, your roads.....yes, sell 'merica to the .... will it even be the highest bidder?
Shortage, lack of, currency devaluation and all the while the top 1% have more than the lower 99% combined, but still they must be bailed out from the mistakes in leadership. The leadership you grant them the power to hold because 'they' know better than 'we the sheeople' the interchangeable cogs that we are.
Is it getting anywhere near time to wake up?
Remember that when Rome collapsed it's military was composed mostly of mercenaries. Foreign born, well paid, and greatly outnumbering their Roman commanders.
Echos of the past ripple to the future...
To paraphrase Ben Franklin: "You have a republic. Good luck keeping it."
It would appear as if a basic concept out of Business 101, vertical integration, has hit the modern mercenary industry like a new fad. It would not be a surprise in the future that if one or more of these companies goes rogue and tries to become a modern version of the Mamertines. It will then become necessary for the nation-state to fight these bodies for its' survival and it will be expensive if these mercenaries manage to get serious weaponry.
Erinys International? Well, no shame there: we are the gods of vengence, the unceasing children of the night. We're Furies, born of blood, who will terrorize you into madness. No problem.
So they've been unleashed. What now?
You take economic growth any way you can get it when economic growth is the only thing you believe in.
It is obvious what this country has become, a world Mafia in disguise. It prouds itself on bribes, threats, bullying, and/or murdering anyone who won't bow and kiss its boots (or +ss). It snubbs at things that will help people, but there is no limit on what it will spend or do to harm or kill peoples. So if all companies switched to producing only guns and bullets, that would be just fine with the US of A.
Ehhh... america's got the strongest military... that is until the dotcom and housing and energy bubbles tear the finacial rug out from underneath us. Then these military indust. corps who have zero patriotism except to gold... will go elsewhere to prop up some other economy with the best murder weapons money can buy.
and this portends what....who is and isn't, who will be and won't...hey, the less rules and laws followed the more protections needed right? So!
What's left of America? And, what are the ideals you hold so dear or think still exist? And for how long if they do?
Yeah, I'm asking
Hey do you think it is time to wake up yet?
This makes up a part of the GDP that many Americans are so proud of. It is about as G as any DP can be.
In looking at the way the USA has moved and continues to move since 911 it has affected the country probably till the end of history. We are not safer
there always has been different and new ways to kill people. These people are taking advantage of different Gov's who allow such companies to make profits. NOW if it was some company from Iran or Iraq they would be classed as terror groups.
It will be interesting to see how many of these guys and their equipment (courtesy of US taxpayors) will show up in Denver to protect the Convention from "terrorists". Maybe Americal will care about this when we have another Kent State or two.
These people protesting Private Military Companies (PMCs) are such hypocrites. They call them "mercenaries", but the preferred term, by those in the industry, is "merciless-naries". If the protesters really want to stop freelance R&P (Rape and Pillage) services they should look at the consumers of such services and ask why there is a market demand for such services. The PMC's are merely supplying a market demand like any other business. The people working for them are just doing their jobs, trying to earn a living to support their families by denying life to other companies' merciless-naries and killing other peoples' families.
The unseen hand of the marketplace is responsible for this kind of business practice, and the unseen finger on that unseen hand is vertical... vertical marketing.
After all, many businesses seek to gain a decisive advantage over their competitors. Just because some seek to do so more aggressively than others should be no cause for alarm.
The only recourse, in a free society, where peoples' right to bear arms is constitutionally protected is for those opposing PMCs to field their own corps of contract R&P serviceworkers to complete in the marketplace.
Hey Obama is like all other "control" politicians. Guns are OK for me but for the people . . . Well they can't be trusted.
re ezeflyer July 28th, 2008 1:09 pm
this is a thoroughly "bi"partisan project. it can't be blamed on obama---yet. but as his silence on this and other issues of grave import grows, it will reveal one of 3 things to be his attitude: indifference, approval or complicity.
Does the world really need more Corporate Merchants of Death?
What sort of creatures could ever work to destroy our world?
Where are the MOB (McKinney's Obama Bashers) and the TRDs (Tricky Republican Devils)? Can't blame this on Obama and the Dems?
at what point in the these transactions does the arms export control act kick in (if at all)?
do any of these corporations deal in chemical and/or biological weapons or related technologies?
who's watching them?
these would be the first questions i'd ask if i were a member of congress, not that i expect any short honest answers.
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! We need MINIONS! Experience serving Dark Master a plus! Excellent benefits..Low pay but satisfyingly evil!
Enter the Pretorian Guard....
You can't imagine how much comfort it gives me to know that these elite warriors are guarding my ballot boxes.
Just look at how private police forces cleaned up new detroit in Robocop.... and how the CEO's always had the public's safety and interests in mind....
Har-de-har-har-har....
KCT