Deconstructing Navy Inc.

摘要

The 21st-century Navy has taken the inherent efficacy of operational contract support (OCS) over sailors' labor as a sacred truth. The more services we can contract out, the more "flexible" and "cost-efficient" we are. But we have not paused to examine the leviathan we have created. There have been far too few studies providing long-term cost-benefit analyses of hiring a legion of contractors rather than retaining a legion of service members. We have evolved into the hybrid military-contractor government body "Navy Inc." Fully 10 percent of the U.S. federal budget is now awarded to military contractors. The contractor component is strong, both as lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and as determinants of the Fleet's battle readiness. As we enter an increasingly perilous fiscal environment, all signs point to the Fleet doubling down on contracting out critical services as a financial necessity-but should we?