In a follow up to a blog we posted recently, it now appears that a Syrian energy production company promised a Russian private military contractor a share of the profits from oil wells that the mercenaries liberated from ISIS. The offer may be designed to entice these fighters to remain in-country, now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has unexpectedly declared …

The federal government may be making plans to fight the next war, and rather than looking inward, it turned to the contractors at NexiTech for assistance. Terms of the contract were not disclosed, but the government expects NexiTech to upgrade authentication, encryption, and other passive measures into more active defenses. There is a considerable sense of urgency in this matter, …

After dismissing earlier casualty reports as “classic disinformation,” the Russian Foreign Ministry now says that “several dozen” Russian and former Soviet Republic mercenaries were wounded or killed in a U.S.-led airstrike outside Deir ez-Zor. They now join the ranks of the thousands of American private military contractors killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. The ministry stressed that the mercenaries, …

Filmmaker Greg Lovett said he did not want to make a depressing movie about burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I just wanted to present the facts, and the facts are depressing,” he said. During these conflicts, rather than dispose of waste safely, commanders ordered it to be burned in huge, open-air pits where the fires often raged 24/7/365. Jessey …

In a significant development for former Iraq contractors, an administrative law judge from the Department of Labor, which administers the Defense Base Act, ruled that there is a link between burn pits and lung disease. In a well-reasoned, 19-page decision, ALJ Christopher Larsen considered the claim of Specialist Veronica Landry. Between 2004 and 2005, she worked for a KBR division …

Although Vladimir Putin does not want people to know it, mercenaries fight for money in Syria, while contractors fight for America in Afghanistan. When Russian military forces arrived in the country in 2015 to prop up the pro-Russian strongman in a longstanding civil war, mercenaries arrived, as well. Officially, 28 Russian mercenaries have died in Syria during 2017 alone, but …

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is proceeding full steam ahead with the prosecution of several former Blackwater guards who served in Iraq, much to the chagrin of many people. Given the issues in the case and the somewhat political nature of the prosecutions, many hoped that Attorney General Sessions would at least order a review of the case. But that has …

The DoD’s heavy reliance on military contractors in places like Afghanistan is one reason why there are an estimated 44,000 troops deployed worldwide who are listed in an amorphous “unknown” category. 1.3 million active duty military personnel serve throughout the world, but this figure does not include military contractors, National Guard, or Reserve forces. In a press briefing unveiling the …

A newly-discovered treatment may enable injured brains to heal themselves after incidents in Afghanistan or elsewhere. High-resolution Relational Resonance-based Electroencephalic Mirroring (HIRREM) is essentially an acoustic mirror that gives the brain a chance to examine itself, according to Wake Forest Medical School’s Dr. Charles H. Tegeler. Dr. Tegeler and his team studied 18 symptomatic veterans who each received about a …

Most people regard the end of the Spanish-American War as the beginning of imperialism in the United States. The turn of the 20th century also provided Americans with the first glimpse of an anti-insurgency campaign, like the 21st century campaigns in Iraq and elsewhere. Rebels in the newly-acquired Philippine Islands, which had been opposed to Spain, simply turned their guns …

The Department of Defense wants Amazon to be its exclusive cloud provider and wants to pay the online retailer $5 billion to fulfill this role. This contract would have tremendous implications for military contractors in Qatar and elsewhere. After some considerable hand-wringing, the DoD finally concluded that it simply lacks the infrastructure to move to the cloud on its own, …

Anvil, a fictional private military contractor, plays an important role in the Netflix series The Punisher, but this company bears little resemblance to the ones that operate in Iraq and elsewhere. A warning to fans: This first section contains potential spoilers. Billy Russo, onetime Marine colleague of antihero Frank Castle, operates Anvil, a company that essentially hires ex-soldiers and sends …