PMCs take over from armies? Plausable?

[18-Till-I-Die]

So i was reading about MGS4 and thinking somewhat about Hammer's Slammers, and an idea came to me.

What if, for whatever reason, huge mercenary corporations began to replace national armies, till the latter were relegated to the pages of history.

We see things like this in games like Mercenaries, MGS or Star Fox, or novels like Hammer's Slammers, a lot. Worlds where mercenaries have all but replaced what we today would call national armies. Usually the mindset is that, because of their fees, they can afford to deploy large numbers of the most advanced equipment or that the simple increase in the size and power of corporations till normal nations are gone anyway. But would that work?

I've always found these stories both really cool, and also kind of impossible sounding, which is why i decided to ask the folks around here, many of whom are far more aware of "military stuff" (for lack of a better word) than i am.

What would it take for mercs to utterly replace, or largely supplant, normal amies? Is that even plausable, or what? And could it work?

[Scottish Ninja]

I'm given to understand that this was actually common hundreds of years ago; mercenary companies tramping across Europe and signing on to whatever army would take them, and at that time mercenaries were the only significant professional soldiers around, excepting household troops - after all, maintaining a standing army is expensive.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I'm given to understand that this was actually common hundreds of years ago; mercenary companies tramping across Europe and signing on to whatever army would take them, and at that time mercenaries were the only significant professional soldiers around, excepting household troops - after all, maintaining a standing army is expensive.

Hundreds and Thousands of years ago, look at Rome or many of the Greek city states of the PErsian Empire.

Wealthy, powerful and advanced nations, find that their citizens time can be "better spent" prospering, while armed service is somthing that either idealists or mercenaries are best for. (Just look at the US Today, and consider how unpopular the very idea of a conscript army is in western nations, barring severe wartime).

[Sidewinder]

Mercs will NEVER replace national armies because their financial resources will NEVER match what a nation can charge through taxes and tariffs. And if the nation institutes a draft, they'll quickly outnumber the mercs.

To give you an idea of how hard it is for mercs to do something without the backing of a national army, let's have Blackwater try to overthrow Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. First, Blackwater has to get its mercs to Zimbabwe. Okay, it can charter an airliner to transport the mercs. But if the Zimbabwe government denies the chartered airliner the right to land, what then? You can't have the mercs parachute out of the airliner-- after D. B. Cooper did this to escape after getting a $200,000 ransom, airliners had Cooper vanes installed to prevent people from opening doors inflight.

Okay, so Blackwater will need a military transport, e.g., a C-130, so its mercs can launch an airborne assault to seize an airfield-- the airfield MUST be seized so the mercs can be resupplied. Wait, what if the Zimbabwe National Army has guys with MANPADS guarding the airfield? And what if the soldiers decide to aim their rifles upwards and shoot at the mercs while they're parachuting down?

Okay, Blackwater has helicopters and Super Tucanos for close air support. Where will these planes fly out of? Unlike the US military's planes, Blackwater's can't perform midair refueling, so they'll need an airfield within range of Zimbabwe. Where will they get this airfield?

Okay, the US government might pressure Mozambique to let Blackwater operate out of that nation's airfields. The mercs might successfully seize an airfield in Zimbabwe and bring in food, water, ammo, and other supplies. Wait, how are the mercs going to get from the airfield to the capital?

Okay, Blackwater has armored vehicles to transport the troops. But the Zimbabwe National Army has armored vehicles too, including tanks. And let's not forget the fact that armored vehicles are heavy, so unless Blackwater gets their hands on a C-17 or two, their transport planes won't be able to bring in enough armored vehicles to transport enough mercs to defeat Mugabe's security forces before these security forces lay siege to the airfield. And forget about Blackwater's Grizzly APCs, those things are too heavy to be transported by anything less than a C-17.

And even if the US government gives Blackwater permission to buy a C-17 or two so it can ship enough Grizzly APCs to transport enough mercs to defeat Mugabe's security forces, how will Blackwater pay for the C-17s? Those things cost $202.3 million each (in 1998 dollars), and that's not even counting the thousands of dollars it costs PER HOUR to operate a jet plane!

Okay, Blackwater has over a billion dollars in US government contracts, but they'll blow this amount within days of their overthrowing Mugabe-- remember, the US occupation of Iraq costs over a billion dollars a day. Who's willing to pay a group of mercs two billion dollars a day-- remember, Blackwater is a private company, it needs to make a profit-- to keep the peace so a new government can be formed? Peace MUST be kept so a new government can be formed-- the US learned this the HARD WAY when its military overthrew Saddam Hussein. Blackwater can't just overthrow Mugabe and then leave, or what would be the point of it doing so in the first place?

And what if Mugabe calls upon security forces still loyal to him to put him back in power? What if these security forces become bandits or guerillas? What if they fight amongst themselves, plunging Zimbabwe into a civil war?

And this is just using a piece of shit third world country as an example. The problems become MUCH bigger when you pit mercs against something higher up the food chain, e.g., France, which has NUKES.

[Flagg]

Unless a nation just privatizes the army.

[Sidewinder]

Unless a nation just privatizes the army.

Politicians will NEVER allow security forces, i.e., militaries and police departments, to be privatized because the politicians depend on these forces to keep them in power, and unless these politicians are wealthy enough to form their own private army or police department, they won't be able to trust a private military contractor to keep the peace in a period of civil unrest instead of deciding, "Fuck the politicians, we mercs have the big guns, we should be in charge!"

[18-Till-I-Die]

Well i'd imagine if that happened, then the politicians would just start looking at things from a more "feudal" perspective. I.e, the ones with vast wealth would just buy the loyalties of private armies, like nobles in ancient times had small armies of their own. For example, i believe Ceasar's legion kind of "belonged" to him, and i vaguely recall reading about some other Roman politico having a legion--also during the Civil War, various monied people bought or raised their own regiments.

More so, if they're well paid enough and well taken care of enough, i doubt the Mercs would be that prone to rebellion. Conquest alone would actually be less economic for such people. Why buy the cow when you have a lifetime supply of free milk anyway?

[Sidewinder]

Well i'd imagine if that happened, then the politicians would just start looking at things from a more "feudal" perspective. I.e, the ones with vast wealth would just buy the loyalties of private armies, like nobles in ancient times had small armies of their own. For example, i believe Ceasar's legion kind of "belonged" to him, and i vaguely recall reading about some other Roman politico having a legion--also during the Civil War, various monied people bought or raised their own regiments.

Note that you're referring to a period of CIVIL WAR, as in the government has fallen and the surviving politicians are fighting over the pieces. If the government is stable, it's strong enough to NOT let a private military company to amass enough power to challenge its security forces. As noted, collecting taxes and instituting a draft will easily give a national army enough human and material resources to overpower any group of mercs.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Defector.

Anyway, I can't think of a time and place, in European history anyway, that has been entirely free of mercenaries. Especially if you stretch the lower edge of the definition down into 'Hired thug', and to sub-governmental levels like local feudal lords and regional authorities.

This is the real problem I had with the Slammers. They were pretty much based on Drake's old regular army unit, and as such reflect the ethos of a regular army unit.
That defies the nature of the beast; they are vastly more professional and committed than the overwhelming majority of historical mercenary bands.
Even them, in the end, did exactly what most genuinely successful mercenaries attempted- to use their force against their employers and gain political power and it's attendant rewards. By the end of the timeline, it was President Hammer.

The Swiss (who frequently were that good) aside, the heyday of the European mercenary was ~1300-1500s, Italy. The conditions that made the military dominance of mercenaries possible are interesting.

First, economics; there needed to be enough money to pay them to fight, and the prospect of the gain of enough more by fighting to make it worth accepting war and the political risks of war. This was the pre- Renaissance; it was a time of economic growth and rivalry, and those conditions were fulfilled.

Scarcity doesn't produce mercenaries, it produces desperate people who want to go out and do their grand scale armed robberies for themselves. Existing wealth with a strong prospect of imminent scarcity, on the other hand- that can be a very edgy situation. It was then, it is now.

Politics; Italy was a patchwork of oligarchic republics (It isn't absolutely that simple but I'm painting with an extremely broad brush here), with a lot of theoretical law, little in the way of enforcement, and frequently sweet damn all in the way of effective checks and balances.
Individuals could be as wealthy as, and wield a large fraction of, the powers of the state, and make personal decisions for purely personal reasons with a large part of the authority of the state.

This is a perfect environment for quanga's (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Armies). In the absence of law, they can make themselves the law anyway. In the presence of too strong a law, or too strong a sense of nation, they do not have the freedom they need to operate. There has to be enough strength in the situation to make them possible, and not enough to make them stop.

They need the absence or extreme weakness of national armies, which represents a move backwards in history- although the British army, for one, is doing a pretty good job of withering away if the recruitment figures are anything to go by.
That raises a couple of questions; why, if the corporations are that powerful, they can't use the shell of their home nation-state to do their dirty work for them, and second, the cost of advanced weapon systems.

Do mercenaries pay for their own military R&D? If not, how do they maintain their edge? Historically, the usual slur is that mercenaries were very casualty- averse. This does not seem to have been entirely true, some of the battles (Pavia, for instance) were real and bloody enough, but at that stage they were basically feudal or post-feudal warbands.

Pride, arrogance, and ego made a lot of difference, and unless they could boost their reputation or their wealth by it, they usually did not risk as much or endure as much as national troops would in the same situation.
How much difference sheer xenophobia made to the combat performance of the Swiss, or to the innumerable Scots mercenaries in German employ, or to Hawkwood's White Company (Englishmen almost all), is debatable, but I think significant.

OK, that rambled a bit. Basically, what I mean is that even with strong companies and weak states, the most likely outcome is for the company to influence policy to effectively use the state as it's mercenary, and have all the advantages without the disadvantages.

There are a couple of holes in this I'll have to go away and think more about; the example of the state/mercenary hybrid, the East India Company, however unlikely it is to recur, and most seriously the effect of international law on the conduct of war.

[NeoGoomba]

For example, i believe Ceasar's legion kind of "belonged" to him, and i vaguely recall reading about some other Roman politico having a legion--also during the Civil War, various monied people bought or raised their own regiments.
?

Caesar and Pompey both funded creation of Legions before and during the Civil War. However, the created Legion was still bound to the Senate first (which was used as an insult to Caesar on one occasion, when the Senate took one of his Legions away from him - one of the Spanish Legions, maybe the 9th or 11th I think).

[Big Orange]

Well another fictional example of a mercenary army of a megacorporation is Haze (minor spoilers) a upcoming FPS for the Playstation 3 where you play a mercenary super soldier in the employ of the mammoth Mantel Global Industries (here is their spoof website).

I don't think a near future PMC could totally suplant the military of the state, unless their is a situation where the PMC is a state in itself or is the subsidiary of a megacorporation that is essentially like a state. I can see PMCs getting bigger, more formal, and better armed, but not really totally replacing the military of a major state. But are they really necessary, when the current set up is good enough?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Unless a nation just privatizes the army.

Politicians will NEVER allow security forces, i.e., militaries and police departments, to be privatized because the politicians depend on these forces to keep them in power, and unless these politicians are wealthy enough to form their own private army or police department, they won't be able to trust a private military contractor to keep the peace in a period of civil unrest instead of deciding, "Fuck the politicians, we mercs have the big guns, we should be in charge!"

Unless the politician is enough of an anti-government free market fanatic. Not all politicians are just cynical power grubbers; some are True Believers of one sort or another. The neocons certainly seem to have tendencies in that direction.

However, I doubt such a situation would be stable, since the mercenaries in question probably would decide "Fuck the politicians, we mercs have the big guns, we should be in charge!" sooner or later.

[MKSheppard]

In my story I'm pecking away on:

2021-2024: Due to the massive instability in the region as a result of the “Beijing Flu”, many African states are now just broken shells of themselves where anarchy reigns supreme (how this differs from the present day state of things is hard to define; but I'd say when the kleptocracy cannot control even it's own capital city; things are bad).

UN-led efforts to stabilize the region are largely ineffective, and result in much scandal, when South African troops stationed in Nambia, Botswana, Zimbawawe, and Mozambique under UN peacekeeping efforts formally seize and annex those countries into South Africa. South Africa's actions provoke much international outcry; but most nations do nothing about it; and don't care. After all, it's just Africa.

The Peoples' Republic of China, however gets very concerned, as by this point, a significant number of Chinese oil comes from Angola; and the region has been significantly impacted by the pandemic.

Large numbers of Chinese emigrated to Angola as part of the Chinese plan to develop Angola; and during the epidemic of 2018, the Chinese enclaves were the safest places to be, even as entire villages nearby were completely wiped out by the diseases. This of course, led to charges of Chinese “Witchcraft” and Chinese were attacked in public on an increasing basis by angry mobs who accused them of orchestrating the plagues in order to have Angola for themselves.

After a massacre at a Chinese-owned farming complex near the capital of Luanda, the Chinese government placed intense pressure onto the surviving rump government in Benguela to award a security contract to NORINCO to restore order within Angola.

Despite China having no home-grown security firm equivalent to Blackwater USA; the contract is executed with significant rapidity, with the first “security contractors” arriving within days.

The Chinese intervention in Africa raises many concerns in the United States, especially over the continuing security of Nigerian oil, especially after it becomes obvious that the “security contractors” that NORINCO is sending to Angola are merely rebadged active-duty PLA troops.

In return, the US pressures what little is left of the Nigerian government and the oil companies in Nigeria (who already had transferred security of their facilities to security contractors, even before the epidemics) to lay out a multi-year, comprehensive contract with the newly formed Spartan Protective Solutions, Inc.

Suspicion of SPS internationally rose when the New York Times revealed that many of SPS' personnel were in reality active-duty Green Berets and US Navy SEALs. This led to a landmark case in which the Times' reporter responsible for the story was imprisoned for revealing classified information, along with his source.

and my original concept:

20xx: A Mercenary company; in the mold of Executive Outcomes, or Sandline, International enters into a contract with a big oil producer of the Exxon or British Petroleum mold, to overthrow what little government remains in a major oil producing area in Africa. Once the overthrow of the government has been achieved, the company ends up being given the internal security/military contract by the oil company of their new corporate state.

Over the next 20 years, the combined forces of the mercenaries and oil company slowly merge and become rather indistingushable from each other as they take over more and more of Africa and "civilize" it; becoming rather like the classical MegaCorporation you find in a lot of Science Fiction Universes which runs entire countries.

NOTES: This is rather more plausible than a company becoming so large and big that it buys existing entrenched National Governments; such as the United States or Japan; which you find in a lot of cyberpunk. It's far better to take over an area where nationality and rule of law are weak jokes, because there will be much less opposition to the takeover.

[Sidewinder]

Note to MKSheppard: you might want to change the name of the American PMC. Spartan was the name of the PMC that employed James Ashcroft. Might I suggest Leonidas, Inc.?

[Sidewinder]

Well another fictional example of a mercenary army of a megacorporation is Haze (minor spoilers) a upcoming FPS for the Playstation 3 where you play a mercenary super soldier in the employ of the mammoth Mantel Global Industries (here is their spoof website).

Personally, I think the "megacorporation + private army = new world order!" thing is bullshit. The profits a corporation can make through sales and services will NEVER match the funds a government can make through taxes and tariffs.

Some comparison. The US currently has a population of 303,048,000. Let's assume each citizen pays one dollar in taxes each day-- that means the government can collect $110,612,520,000 per year, enough to pay the annual salaries of 6,457,994 soldiers, or buy 25,428 M1 tanks, or 803 F-22 Raptors, or 85 Zumwalt class destroyers. That's just with one dollar per citizen per day-- of course, we know the US government collects a lot more in taxes. Can anyone name a corporation with comparable resources?

[andrewgpaul]

I quite liked the fact that the old Cyberpunk 2020 RPG avoided this cliche. One 'security corporation' assassinated a member of the US government. The US then spent the next three months demonstrating that this was a very bad thing to do, and exterminated the corporation's entire worldwide payroll.

[Master of Ossus]

The reason that developed nations have national armies is because the free market will under-pay for national defense, because of the hold-out problem. I know of no possible mechanism to overcome this effect, so in the future it is very unlikely that developed nations will field armies comprised mainly or even in large part by private military companies. This is especially true because nations have vastly larger R&D budgets than any PMC could provide, and also have capital and credit far in excess of any company (after all, they control their respective economies). Therefore, the government is clearly the best provider of national security.

[Sidewinder]

The reason that developed nations have national armies is because the free market will under-pay for national defense, because of the hold-out problem.

What do you mean by the "hold-out problem"?

[Alyrium Denryle]

The reason that developed nations have national armies is because the free market will under-pay for national defense, because of the hold-out problem.

What do you mean by the "hold-out problem"?

Not sure on the terminology, but if the free market was in charge of national defense, the demand does not meet the actual need. Ex. It is hard enough to get politicians to pay for needed equipment upgrades and medical benefits for soldiers. Imagine what it would be like getting a free market to pay for that.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Mercenaries have a few advantages, but they tend to only work in a few niches. Most democracies have a great deal of trouble with foreign involvements. Most soldiers are voters, and there's a high likelihood that they have families who vote as well. This translates military setbacks into political setbacks. Mercenaries IMO don't have this issue; Mercenaries aren't so visibly identified with the country. At least in the current Iraqi occupation I don't recall ever reading a single human interest story from embeds with mercenary units. But the web and local papers are loaded with human interest stories about soldiers on deployment. So the advantage for mercenaries here is that they can be deployed in conflicts that have not energized a population without as much political fallout for the deploying government.

The second "advantage" is that mercenaries are not as open as most modern military organizations. Laws which grant journalists access (although limited) don't really exist for mercenaries. That means that mercenaries can get away with things that a real military would be prohibited from doing. Ruthlessness may sometimes be an asset. (For the record my view is that morally, obeying the laws of war outweighs pretty much all the tactical gains that could be made by breaking them.)

So summary, mercenaries are probably better in "dirty" conflicts, and probably would cause less political grief in foreign deployments, than a national army in the same situation. Also I ran into something which suggested that Finnish, Swedish, and even Russian PMC's had gotten contracts in Iraq, and I doubt that losses in those groups will ever really stir national sentiment one way or another. (Unfortunately I don't at the moment have a link, I'll search and probably post the quote I found, sometime after Christmas.)

[Siege]

Like Mr. Tarrant, I expect mercenaries to be mainly useful in a situation where a nation wants to put its military boot down in a particular piece of territory even though there exists no broad electoral support to do so. As long as the mercenaries do the dirty work, there are no highly visible body-bags coming home and the government has plausible deniability should the mercs turn out to be slightly too trigger-happy.

[Coalition]

One argument that I used for Battletech, is that mercenaries provide a source of already-trained troops who are familiar with their equipment. This argument was used when discussing mercenary paychecks, and how much to repay them when arranging transport (my argument was to pay for their transportation, rented or organic, but only pay regular fees during that time). Essentially you treat the mercs as a regular military unit.

Instead of having to train a brand new force, and purchase their equipment, you hire a group of mercenaries, who have all the training and equipment provided. Of course, you don't get to keep the equipment, but a smart government hires the mercenaries to train their own troops, to have a core of trained personnel that can then train others.

As to finances available to a military vs mercenary, I would like to compare instead the results of the hiring. I.e. nation Generica has ten million dollars to spend on its military. It can hire mercenaries, or train its own people. If it hires mercenaries, it immediately gets a force of trained personnel who know how to use their weaponry and after they are not needed they are no longer a burden on your budget. If it gets volunteers from its own population, it has to take the time to train them, it has to purchase the weapon systems (instead of just providing maintenance), and the troops are a continuing cost.

Mercs would provide the following:
* rapid supply of trained troops who are familiar with their weapons
* only pay maintenance on the weapons, not the purchase price
* no local bodies
* no enduring cost after the mission (no pension, health insurance, etc after the contract is done)

A National military provides:
* enduring force (the soldiers hired will stay afterward, instead of leaving)
* lower cost per soldier (no need for the soldiers to make a profit)
* Durable goods - the nation (planet/empire) gets to keep the military hardware because it belongs to them

So if you needed a short-term military, then you would use mercenaries. If you need a long-term mission, then you use national troops.

[Siege]

But isn't the problem with that scenario that someone needs to train the mercenaries first? As I understand it, most of the people Blackwater puts on the ground are former military themselves. It's the same deal with other companies like Sandlike and Executive Outcomes: these people have been trained by a military, and then after their military career they continue to make an extra buck as PMC. Now, if there is no military to train the merc, then the mercenary corporation would have to provide training, making the mercenaries more expensive simply because their parent corporation has to invest a lot more time and money in them before they can start renting them out. And of course as the cost for the mercs goes up, the incentive for nations to hire them goes down.

This isn't to say PMCs couldn't be a potentially useful short-term expansion of an already-existing military (like what happens Blackwater in Iraq), particularly when it's the same military that supplied the mercs their training before they were mercs, but I don't think you could replace a national military this way. Merely quickly expand an existing military to some point should you require to do so.

EDIT: To clarify, you could of course always hire foreign mercenaries if you don't have an army of your own... But then at some point you have to wonder what's going to convince the mercenaries to leave your nation once their contract is up. After all, if they're a full-blown army of themselves, and you have nothing...

[PainRack]

What about individual mercenaries? There isn't any reason why something like the Foreign Legion or Gurkhas can't be created in other countries and hire citizens from around the world.

They're mercs since they aren't really citizens of that specific country and are signing on for cash, but in all other aspects, they're part of your standing military.

One argument that I used for Battletech, is that mercenaries provide a source of already-trained troops who are familiar with their equipment. This argument was used when discussing mercenary paychecks, and how much to repay them when arranging transport (my argument was to pay for their transportation, rented or organic, but only pay regular fees during that time). Essentially you treat the mercs as a regular military unit.

Instead of having to train a brand new force, and purchase their equipment, you hire a group of mercenaries, who have all the training and equipment provided. Of course, you don't get to keep the equipment, but a smart government hires the mercenaries to train their own troops, to have a core of trained personnel that can then train others.

As to finances available to a military vs mercenary, I would like to compare instead the results of the hiring. I.e. nation Generica has ten million dollars to spend on its military. It can hire mercenaries, or train its own people. If it hires mercenaries, it immediately gets a force of trained personnel who know how to use their weaponry and after they are not needed they are no longer a burden on your budget. If it gets volunteers from its own population, it has to take the time to train them, it has to purchase the weapon systems (instead of just providing maintenance), and the troops are a continuing cost.

Mercs would provide the following:
* rapid supply of trained troops who are familiar with their weapons
* only pay maintenance on the weapons, not the purchase price
* no local bodies
* no enduring cost after the mission (no pension, health insurance, etc after the contract is done)

A National military provides:
* enduring force (the soldiers hired will stay afterward, instead of leaving)
* lower cost per soldier (no need for the soldiers to make a profit)
* Durable goods - the nation (planet/empire) gets to keep the military hardware because it belongs to them

So if you needed a short-term military, then you would use mercenaries. If you need a long-term mission, then you use national troops.

Battletech represent a ...... unique situation in which the national governments devolved centralised power to individuals. Since most mechwarriors own their own mechs and volunteer their service to the state(or are forced to do so via feudal demands), that really isn't applicable.

[Beowulf]

The argument in Hammer's Slammers goes: Poor nations can't afford to raise troops, due to the large upfront cost for equipment as well as the continuing costs for the troops (both pay and replacement). They can't afford mercenaries really either, but they can get a loan for that, and hopefully they'll manage to stay in power to pay it off. It's a better bet than trying to scrap up their own army. Also, nations don't have to worry too much about replacing mercenaries.