
Founder of Blackwater's Drive to Build a Private Air Force - nomoba
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-drive-to-build-private-air-force/
======
numair
This story is written with such an incredibly obnoxious and sensationalist
slant, like most things written about Erik Prince and Blackwater. You'd think
they had uncovered evidence he was working on contract for ISIS or something.

America's use of PMCs is as old, actually older, than the country itself. Many
of the issues that led to Blackwater's infamy from their time in Iraq were
directly caused by State Department incompetence (I doubt anyone would want to
argue that the US State Department is an efficient, well-run, non-politicized
entity). Erik Prince is not some crazy Christian zealot out to wage a holy
war; if anything, he provided the US government with unique capability that
they desperately needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he
hadn't been involved in Iraq.

I see nothing evil or nefarious about a defense contractor commissioning
efficient tactical aircraft for anti-terrorism and civil defense operations.
The fact that it's Erik Prince, and the mass media has painted him as the evil
overlord that caused all of our problems in Iraq, doesn't make it any
different. It would be strange if someone who was highly competent and
specialized in defense operations, who had enough money, WASN'T building these
sorts of things.

Look, I'm mad about what the US government did in Iraq. Everyone should be. We
shouldn't have even gone there. But none of this is Erik Prince's fault.

Venture capital firms have "scouts," giving them access to deals they'd
otherwise overlook or couldn't access. The US defense and intelligence
communities have people like Erik Prince.

~~~
yardie
> he provided the US government with unique capability that they desperately
> needed, and things would have probably been far messier if he hadn't been
> involved in Iraq.

I have many friends and family that have participated in Iraq II and
Afghanistan. They see PMCs as morale destroyers. While they are getting paid
E-4 rates, or higher, the PMCs are getting paid 4-5x that for doing the same
damn job!

They've had to learn to do more with less while the PMCs show up with shiny
new toys all the time. And if that wasn't enough they were getting calls or
letters from home saying their benefits had been cut, allowances were down,
etc. Then the DoD was "winding down" it's campaigns by replacing enlistees
with even more PMCs. Suddenly, guys that wanted to make a career in the armed
forces, and had planned to stay 10-20 years, couldn't re-up. In the end few of
them felt they had no choice but to join Academy or Blackwater since job
prospects back home were so meager.

They were making things so much better in Iraq the PM wanted them out of his
country because of the unaccountability and civilian deaths directly
attributable to them. Shooting civilians in the street is the first thing I
think of when the word Blackwater comes up.

~~~
peteretep
Your first three paragraphs are criticism of defence policy, not of PMCs.

What an Iraqi PM claims to want publicaly is likely to contain at least three
levels of indirection, or the person filling the role wouldn't be qualified
for the role.

~~~
bordercases
Is there some statute I missed that declares that PMs should have ~3 mis-
directions in everything they say, at all times? Or are they able to settle at
two?

It would be much easier to declare where the misdirections are if you expect
them, than to postulate the law that would make your syllogism work.

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RockyMcNuts
You let entrepreneurs make billion-dollar fortunes on war, they're going to
make wars keep happening.

Roosevelt said 'not one war millionaire' from WWII and it's one of the things
that made WWII legitimate and successful.

Adventurers wearing the mantle of patriotism while enriching themselves and
leaving a trail of destruction and hatred that will last for generations are
one of the things that made Iraq and Afghanistan a travesty.

~~~
explorigin
Have you heard about IBM's role in WWII? Go read "IBM and the Holocaust" by
Edwin Black. Those tattooed numbers on the arms of people in concentration
camps were numbers tabulated by IBM machines.

~~~
phreeza
I believe Roosevelt was mostly talking about nobody making a fortune off
american war expenditure, not german. (also, the Holocaust and WW2 are not the
same thing)

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calgoo
A really hope Karma / Murphy deals this guy what he deserves for the crimes
that his company has done. Private militarizes armies should NEVER be allowed
to exist. These people should never have the right to fight for governments,
and should all be put in jail, especially Erik Prince. Also, the government
officials that gave them the contracts should also be jailed as traitors to
their countries. They are handing over military power to non-government actors
to commit crimes without punishment. This needs to be stopped, right now.

~~~
harperlee
Although I believe that you are right, you are jumping here from "this
particular mercenaries are criminals" to "the use of mercenaries is treason
and should never be allowed", an that is a big jump.

In my opinion, if there are adequate mechanisms for the control of mercenaries
(such as not allowing them to have more power than the public army, or the
restriction to / of particular capabilities), having mercenaries in particular
situations (such as people with a high degree of specialization) could be
feasible.

The problem here is that they were given ample independent power with adequate
supervision, again imho.

~~~
toyg
If you need an army of supervisors to oversee your mercenaries, you might as
well just train more troops.

~~~
harperlee
The efforts might not be the same.

~~~
toyg
Yeah, but considering your core competency is "kill the bad guys" rather than
"manage and police subcontractors", you're more likely to get good results by
sticking to what you know.

~~~
harperlee
I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Neither a government in general nor
particularly its army have only one core competency, and surely it's not "kill
the bad guys". I'd actually say management is closer to their core competency.
Which percentage of the army's personnel is shooting bullets, and which
percentage of them are managing putting the bullets (and the troops) on the
ground, analyzing where to put them, policing that they comply with what the
government wants, recruiting, overseeing, intelligence, managing
subcontractors and providers (gasoline, tanks, fences, uniforms, building
construction, IT equipment, etc.)?

~~~
toyg
These ancillary skills in management are developed in order to achieve well-
defined objectives: overpower (i.e. shoot) the bad guys and conclusively win
conflicts. You cannot apply them to mercenaries; even if you replicate the
chain of command down to sergeant level or whatever, their incentives are
fundamentally different: mercenaries have a fundamental interest in keeping
the fighting going as long as possible, because they are paid to fight.

A regular army is supposed to go out, win a conflict ("shoot the bad guys"),
go home, get decorated, enjoy pensions and glory; that's the core mission, and
its core competency is (or rather should be) to get that done in the shortest
possible amount of time (or even not getting engaged in the first place). A
mercenary only gets paid as long as there is an ongoing conflict involving a
wealthy-enough client. He's not interested in ending the conflict; thinking
you can police him in seeing it some other way is just deluded.

~~~
harperlee
I agree with you on the conflict of interest that the mercenaries have, but I
think that it extends to regular armies also.

An army that doesn't fight is a budget that is claiming to be cut, and you can
see that discussion taking place in several european countries. In the United
States, however, they have wars to fight, and so the army and its space is a
huge industry, with one client, the US government; and if there are no wars to
fight, it will quickly collapse.

There are in fact a lot of accusations that the military industry in the
United States instigates action for that specific purpose. So they don't only
keep alive the fire, as the mercenaries - they also push to start new ones!
And I can tell you, the Army has more political force than mercenaries to do
this.

~~~
toyg
I'm not disagreeing, but at least with regular armies those problems are
indeed identified as _problems_. With mercenaries, it's just what they do.

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exDM69
Taking a look at his Wikipedia page, it seems like his PR company wrote it.
The man is described as a "philantropist" ffs. The history of the page looks a
bit suspicious too. There's very few mentions of any kind of criticism or
negative statements about him or his ventures.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Prince](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Prince)

~~~
chippy
Yeah if only there was a way of changing that page to say something else.

~~~
exDM69
And engaging in a Wikipedia editing contest against a supposedly well funded
PR company on a very controversial topic? Don't expect a very positive outcome
from such endeavors.

At least the page isn't full of blatant lies (well the philantropy is a bit
questionable) but it's very selective about the facts it brings up. I'd expect
it would be much harder to get approved edits done on this page than most
other Wikipedia pages, including those of big name politicians. You'd have to
really pay attention to the sources you'd be citing and careful about the
language you use not to get disputed/deleted.

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andyjohnson0
_" In May 2014, both Thrush planes were flown from the U.S. across the
Atlantic Ocean to Airborne’s hangar."_

How common is it for single engine single seat aircraft to be flown across
large oceans? Does the Thrush 510G have sufficient fuel capacity?

~~~
dingaling
> How common is it for single engine single seat aircraft to be flown across
> large oceans?

It is routine. SOCATA deliver their popular single-turboprop TBM aircraft from
their factory in southern France via Ireland, Iceland and Canada to US
customers. Likewise Pilatus stage PC-12s through Scotland as the first hop.

Spotters at Keflavik in Iceland have a great variety!

Cessnas flow in the other direction, though less frequently. Even a little
piston-engined C172 has made the eastbound delivery journey and he skipped
Iceland!

Usually the flights are made by contracted ferry pilots, from companies such
as Southern Cross

[http://southernx.com/](http://southernx.com/)

~~~
andyjohnson0
Thanks! Your comment reminded me of a discussion about this from a few months
ago [1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372898)

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contingencies
Quite a long article; I'm not surprised some of the comments here appear
inconsistent with the content.

TLDR; A great deal of money (allegedly only $8M, but probably more including
facilities and engineering) and effort was put in to acquiring, adapting and
testing two conventional, piloted planes as offensive weapons and surveillance
platforms. They were riddled with problems including registration and
licensing and actual flight problems and have never seen service. Prince let
down his clients, raised significant heat from western governments and
subsequently his own board members (who then needed to cover their collective
asses), but sidestepped these issues by seeking Chinese government investment:
his efforts continue.

After all of this, from a business perspective one wonders if larger COTS UAV
could have been utilized more cost effectively.

From a moral perspective, everyone mentioned in this article including the
Austrian engineers are culpable.

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strictnein
Strike Commander (1994) was only a couple years off. The game was set in 2011,
based around the idea of a small private air force doing various work for
various agencies (including the IRS, I believe).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_Commander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_Commander)

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frozenport
Why is Embraer allowed to make a coin aircraft but these guys aren't?

~~~
gambiting
Oh they are. They just haven't applied for the proper permissions, while
Embraer has. The problem here seems to be that Prince wanted to modify planes
in secret, without obtaining necessary permits.

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gadders
Why was the title changed from "ECHO PAPA EXPOSED: Inside Erik Prince’s
Treacherous Drive to Build a Private Air Force"

Perhaps it should at least be just the subheading?

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jokoon
So a little like SpaceX for NASA?

I wonder how international laws and military laws cover PMCs. I also wonder
how efficient they really are. I guess they mostly are mostly used for
flexibility and lower important objectives.

The larger problem is discipline, you can easily have a PMC do some horrible
thing or a scandal, which could create international tensions.

~~~
exDM69
Not at all like SpaceX for NASA (which is mostly civilian operations, and
pretty transparent when it's for DOD).

The article describes an operation where the Chinese were funding the
manufacture of light attack aircraft to be used to guard special interests in
the civil wars of corrupt African nations.

