There are some good arguments against mercenaries incentive wise as being bad for peace. Ironically Military Industrial Complexes have even worse incentives - an amoral actor (out to maximize gain and indifferent to suffering not inflicting it gratuitously) might want to start a war but it should be one they would win and survive. A MIC with the same lack of morality would care only about generating demand and not victory as seen as early as Civil War profiteers who sold shoddy goods. On the other hand one advantage a MIC has is they are content with cold wars and stockpiling. The underlying problem war for profit is sadly ancient - before there was such a thing as a MIC many would fight openly for the sake of plunder and profit.
it is sort of silly though. if i understand correctly, hollow points are not terribly useful in a typical military engagement because they are easily stopped by body armor. modern military rounds like 5.56 are designed to have a small cross-sectional area at impact to penetrate armor.
Terminal ballistics is the mother of all holy wars. There are undending arguments over caliber, weight, soft point vs. hollow point vs. JHP, etc. Expanding bullets pretty useless against body armor, but so are pistols in general, because AFAIK the U.S. military doesn't issue armor-piercing pistol ammunition. Besides, any sort of infantry engagement will rely on 5.56 rifles, and the standard M855/M855A1 ammo, while not strictly defined as "armor piercing", does contain a steel penetrator and is quite effective against body armor at close-ish ranges.
Nevertheless, the U.S. military very much believes in the usefulness of hollow points in urban/CQ environments, and in fact the Army is now issuing hollow point bullets for the M17 and M18 service pistols. Presumably this ammo would not be used in a conflict against uniformed soldiers from a fellow Hague signatory state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Expanding_bullet&...
From the Hague Convention:
"The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions.
The present Declaration is only binding for the Contracting Powers in the case of a war between two or more of them.
It shall cease to be binding from the time when, in a war between the Contracting Parties, one of the belligerents is joined by a non-Contracting Power."
It describes a completely different type of round.
That was written primarily to apply to what is often called a "dum dum" bullet.
5.56 (with certain exceptions for things like m855 or armor piercing) is designed to fragment, not expand, and some variants that might appear to be a "hollow point" are actually designed in that way to enhance ballistic performance (OTM).
Interestingly, just last year the US Army approved the use of expanding bullets in M17 and M18 service pistols (both Sig P320). The issued ammo is Winchester XM1153, and yes, the Army (and everyone else) refers to this as a hollow point round.
EDIT: Also note that the Army disagrees with you; their justification for approving the use of hollow points is not that they're allowed under the Hague Convention, but that U.S. is not bound by it in many cases, such as warfare against irregular fighters, which describes pretty much all military conflicts for the last decade.
Also "dum dum"is a type of bullet (and I'm old enough to remember) that described a soft lead bullet that often did expand, not a hollow point. Hollow points were not in general use back then though they did exist.
But I seem to remember you saying that Hague Art. III doesn't cover HP ammo at all, which is incorrect. If you carried HP ammo in Afghanistan, it was allowed (strictly speaking) because Hague doesn't apply to conflict against irregular fighters. The U.S. military openly acknowledges that Hague prohibits HP ammo in regular warfare between signatories, and that information is everywhere you look if you follow any news or debates about military firearms. For example, the big news about the new M17 isn't the gun, but the fact that HP pistol ammo is now standard-issue, and how the Army addresses Hague Art. III in justifying the change [1].
1 - https://thenewsrep.com/73676/big-story-armys-modular-handgun...
Here's an actual legal analysis that explains the ridiculous footing the Hague convention "dumdum bullet" ban (because that's what it was) has: http://www.prep-blog.com/PDF/Hague-Hollow-Points-Berry.pdf
Our supervisors, the organization which employed our company, and their senior management were exceedingly clear that we were only authorized to aim or discharge a weapon in self defense.
People reading articles like this may get the idea that the vast army of "contractors" which were shuffling around Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2003-2011 time frame were somehow in offensive roles. Even Blackwater had a fairly restrictive ROE. The actual number of contractors who were in any way proactively engaged in combat operations, usually embedded with an organization with the ANA or ANP, I would estimate at about 1% of the contractor population total.
The remaining 99% were confined to a strictly defensive ROE. Nobody wanted to piss away their $170k a year, nearly tax free job because they'd mistaken something that wasn't a threat, for an actual threat.
VBIED, BBIED and other threats to vehicles while driving around are not going to be solved by shooting at people anyways.
In the entire multi year time period that I spent in operational areas, not a single person from the company that I worked for ever discharged a weapon, for any reason, outside of the shooting range.
As in they can witness a whole village being razed and wouldn’t be allowed to fire a single shot whilst a soldier would be compelled to engage and for the most part an order not to do so will likely be an illegal one.
I think of it like Heraclitus; “Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
In the modern context, what equals out those numbers is largely training and muscle memory, so that once your adrenaline kicks in and your brain isn't fully functioning, you still know what needs to be done and can do it almost on autopilot. That can turn more of the 80 into the 9, so to speak, which is what a modern military needs.
However, I still wonder about the psychology of the mercenary asassin. Who are they, what stories do they tell themselves to justify their actions and does the 160k buy them peace of mind?
The salaries they're paying for US Citizen guards at the US Embassy in Kabul are around $90k at present. There's a sufficient number of people who really need the money that they can recruit and fill positions at that figure.
The PMCs don't call themselves mercenaries. Everyone else does, though. And it's accurate:
’from Latin mercēnārius (“hired for money")’
They are, though.
Tax free or after tax? Aren't Americans taxed worldwide?
I wonder what would happen if USA completely ends the operations that keep this people busy. How many of them are there? What are they supposed to do then? Office work?
I imagine being an assassin would conflict there a bit yeah
Have you seen Danny Trejo? Like.. he is not the prettiest guy, but I still LOVE him, love his acting and the movies he has been in.
Though tax enforcement is sometimes more vigorous than general criminal enforcement, so I guess the tax angle isn't completely irrelevant.
Regardless of how unscrupulous FB may or may not be.
In the case of US contractors (PAE, Fluor, Bechtel etc operating in Iraq, Afghanistan) there is also the tax factor, known to all overseas contractors. I am not precise on the dates and figures here, but something like the first $85k of gross income is completely untaxed, if they remain outside of the USA more than 325 days per year. And no state income taxes because they're not a resident of any state.
Something tells me that these guys have 100% of their payroll for whatever they were doing handled domestically within the UAE, and aren't declaring it to the IRS, however.
There's a lot of civilians going around the federal contracting job market who have a few years of experience working as a middle-management fobbit at LSA Anaconda in Iraq, or similar, who will get that job before another applicant who is an ex army ranger who did 5 rotations through Kapisa and Kunar provinces.
You should go read some more before you comment, because everything in your post from, prior-military career prospects to the way untaxed income works, is wrong.
For every one person that's currently been able to get a new contract under the LOGCAP contract doing stuff at KAF, in the year 2018, there's 19 unemployed people who used to be $160k contractors at KAF who are back in CONUS working ordinary civilian jobs at normal employee rates. Many of them in places where salaries are a lot lower than you would see in California, where you can buy a 3BD house for $130k, somewhere in middle america. Saying that people are working for $30k jobs at Waffle House may be a rhetorical flourish of exaggeration, but it's not very far off the mark if you look at the number of people who used to make $120-165k for Dyncorp who are now working for small town police or sheriffs departments in Kansas or Minnesota, as ordinary cops, for $40-50k.
The US presence in Iraq is presently about 3% to 5% of the size of what it used to be, both in active duty military personnel and number of US-citizen contractors. In Afghanistan, about 5-10% of what it was at its peak. This is why people who used to work for organizations like Dyncorp, ITT-Exelis, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, PAE and others are now going to work for even more shady contracting organizations based in Dubai (like Erik Prince's new company), and end up doing weird things in Yemen, ultimately under the command of the Saudi and UAE militaries.
For the military, where officers are making even less than a SDE 1 at Microsoft, this is insane amounts of money. Equivalent to 3 years of salary for NCO or enlisted.
I hate the "why doesn't X just become a software engineer" attitude.
Or to become a contractor.
No one's gonna pay you 160k and trust you to operate in Yemen just because you play militia on the weekends with some overweight guys from your state and you won a marksmanship match once out at your local shooting range.
In most other cities (even just going an hour north to SF) it's fine. "Software engineer" used to have a nerd stigma a generation ago, but that hasn't been the case in a decade or more, and nerds can do fine with women.
It was pretty miserable while I was in it, though. Silicon Valley is not really a place where the culture encourages "branching out a little", nor does it attract people who are interested in that. This is self-reinforcing: people who were born here and aren't interested in tech tend to move up to SF/Berkeley/Oakland while they're single, which have greater cultural diversity.
I was in some sense lucky: I met my wife when she had recently moved back from Peru and was re-establishing her career here. Another year or so and she probably would've moved to Berkeley.
That's condescending. Maybe I choose my interests for my enjoyment rather than other peoples'.
The elite special forces is a completely different ballgame. You need to be smarter and more fit than probably 90% of the population. Lots of these guys end up doing very well for themselves after leaving the military.
From personal experience I can say this is incorrect. The 'regular' special forces are the Green Berets (Top 5% of the Army). Elite special forces (CAG/Delta) 5% of the 5%
Not even 1% of the military can get into SOF, and that's less than 1% of general US population.
The people who get through BUD/S are generally Olympic class athletes who are selected for very specific mental and physical traits that are almost non-existent in the general population. There's absolutely nothing straightforward about getting into any SOF organization.