“Aviation maintainers not deploying with their [brigades] results in an erosion of skill and experience essential to soldier and leader development,” Army officials said in the document. “The atrophy of these critical skills erodes the brigade’s ability to deploy in the future and sustain itself in an expeditionary manner to locations that may not permit the deployment of contractors.”

According to the Army document, three CABs have deployed to Afghanistan since 2013 with reduced maintenance staffs. A typical CAB usually deploys with 1,500 soldiers but can swell above 2,500 depending on the mission. In 2013, a brigade deployed with 1,900 troops, but as U.S. forces were reduced in Afghanistan, a brigade of only 800 deployed in 2015. Despite the reduction in troop levels, the brigade was still expected to maintain and fly its roughly 100 aircraft.

Currently, the 4th Infantry Division’s CAB is deployed to Afghanistan and provides “country-wide aviation support,” according to a breakdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan that was compiled by the Institute for the Study of War. It primarily provides rotor-wing support in the form of helicopter gunships and transports.

According to the Army document, only 6 percent of the 4th’s CAB is dedicated to maintaining aircraft. That small number is specifically for recovering aircraft that land or crash in a hostile environment. Instead, 427 civilian personnel — at a cost of $101 million annually — are maintaining the CAB’s fleet of helicopters. Through 2014 and 2015, 390 contractors maintained both the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions’ aircraft for $86 million when their CABs were deployed to Afghanistan.

While U.S.-led combat operations in Afghanistan officially ended in 2014, last fall, as the Taliban gained momentum throughout the country, President Obama agreed to keep about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through 2016, and 5,500 into 2017.

Although the troop levels are low compared to the 45,000 deployed at the start of 2014, the number of uniformed service members in Afghanistan is only part of the U.S. war effort there. As of April, 26,000 Pentagon contractors are in Afghanistan, about half of whom are assigned to logistics and maintenance duties, according to publicly available reports.

Although the number of contractors has almost always exceeded the number of uniformed troops in Afghanistan, the ratio of civilian employees compared to U.S. military personnel has more than doubled in the past two years, from 1.34 to 2.92.

“I am not at all convinced that the only units affected are the combat aviation brigades,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a recent interview. “Aside from financially … is there a potential that it increases the risk that our folks face just because of these political limits? Those questions are certainly worthy of a significant deep dive on the part of the committee.”

The contract announcement said Six3 Intelligence Solutions—a private intelligence company recently acquired by CACI International—won a $10 million no-bid Army contract to provide “intelligence analysis services.” According to the Pentagon, the work will be completed over the next year in Germany, Italy and, most notably, Syria.

Beyond this, details are scant. For example, it is difficult to say, given how little information is available, how many contractors might have to go into the country under this contract. It could be just a few (presumably well-paid) intelligence analysts augmenting a military unit or it could be many more.

The Pentagon and CACI would not elaborate on the kind of work Six3 would be doing either, other than “intelligence analysis services,” which encompasses a broad spectrum of activities.
But Sean McFate—a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, the author of Shadow War, and a former gun-for-hire himself—told The Daily Beast: “This is no ordinary contractor… Six3 Intelligence Solutions is a private intelligence company, and the fact that we outsource a good portion of our intelligence analysis creates a strategic dependency on the private sector to perform vital wartime operations.”

Six3, which gets the bulk of its work from the intelligence agencies, specializes in biometrics and identity intelligence—figuring out who people really are—as well as cyber and reconnaissance. Its former CEO has said that 95 percent of the company’s staff has the highest level of security clearance.

An archived version of Six3’s website says this about the company’s biometrics division: “Our expertise ranges from finger, palm, face, and iris examinations to exploitation and forensic analysis.”
Fewer of its contracts are with the military, but it has previously provided intelligence services in Afghanistan and Europe, as well as supporting the “Counter-Insurgency Targeting Program,” and related intelligence and operational support for the Army National Ground Intelligence Center and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to a search of the Defense Department’s contracts archive.

Recognizing this is an ever-expanding field, CACI acquired Six3 Intelligence Solutions, which had only been around for four years, for $820 million in 2013, describing it as “the biggest deal” in CACI’s “51-year history.”

At the time of the purchase, CACI CEO Ken Asbury said he thought Six3 would open up an additional $15 billion in contract opportunities. CACI has been providing the U.S. military contractor support for years, including interrogators assigned and working at Abu Ghraib prison at the time of the abuse scandal.

“Contractors do a lot more than drive trucks and cook meals; they do intelligence, pull triggers, and support Special Operations forces,” McFate said.

So far, there has been no mention of private contractors going inside Syria with U.S. troops, but military contracting and special operations experts said it is safe to assume that Six3 isn’t the first.
“I’ve long said, the military looks at professional services contractors like the old American Express commercial, i.e., they dare not leave home without them,” said David Isenberg, author of Shadow Force: Private Security contractors in Iraq.

The intelligence community is particularly reliant on contractors today, he added.

But due to the highly sensitive and dangerous nature of the mission in Syria, little information is unclassified. In Iraq—where there are just over 4,000 U.S. troops on the ground—the Pentagon is more transparent. Since last summer, the number of contractors working for the Defense Department had just about doubled from 1,300 to 2,500.

The number has ticked up as the number of U.S. troops on the ground steadily increases and bases grow to house them. Private companies are providing everything from meals to perimeter security at Iraq’s Besmaya Compound and Camp Taji, both sites where U.S. troops are training Iraqi soldiers to fight ISIS. In 2015, only 98 people were on the ground in Iraq providing base support. Today, that number is 390, and includes American contractors, third country nationals and local Iraqis, according to a July report from U.S. Central Command.

These are just the Pentagon’s numbers. The U.S. government—including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad—employ far more contractors. The Central Command report says there are approximately 7,100 contractors supporting U.S. government operations in Iraq. They’re washing laundry, cooking meals, and providing security, to name a few of the jobs the U.S. government outsources.
“Contractors encourage ‘mission creep’ because they allow the Administration to put more people on the ground than they report to the American people,” McFate said.

Last week’s clue that contractor support is growing in Syria suggests something similar might be happening in that country.

The Pentagon first announced in November that 50 U.S. commandos were deploying to northern Syria to advise forces battling the Islamic State there. Before that, the CIA was believed to be operating in the country, arming rebel groups as part of a separate clandestine program. Needless to say, if contractors were supporting the CIA mission, those details were classified.

In April, the U.S. military presence in Syria expanded when President Barack Obama announced that an additional 250 special operations forces would deploy to help local fighters as they battled ISIS. With more troops on the ground, local infrastructure is quietly being built or improved to support them and the local fighters they are there to advise. For example, the length of an airstrip in Hasakah, a town in northern Syria controlled by Kurdish forces, is being doubled to receive larger planes, CNN reported in February.

While the battle against ISIS continues, Iraq and Syria will continue to offer opportunities to defense contractors, but the big money will come when reconstruction begins. The U.S. spent $60 billion in Iraq on reconstruction efforts and so far, over $110 billion in Afghanistan.

Last week, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signaled that after ISIS is pushed out of towns and cities across Iraq and Syria, there will be an opportunity for private contractors.
“There will be towns to rebuild, services to reestablish and communities to restore,” Carter told troops July 27 in Fort Bragg, N.C.

“That’s not a principally American job. We will play a role in it, but remember the more than $2 billion in pledges that we got last week will mostly be executed through civilian agencies and frequently they’ll use contractors to do that,” he said later that day, speaking to reporters. It’s “going to be a big job.”