Comment by defrost

2 years ago

> There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US.

There's a great deal of work for private US militia's, China has a substantial contract with a subgroup spun off from the private contractor formerly known as Erik Prince's Blackwater.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Services_Group

TBH it's a full time investigative exercise keeping track of them all. The linked article gives a very partial overview of one arm of many and tails off after 2021.

5 comments

defrost

Reply
hattmall  2 years ago

Not sure I would classify PMC's as militias. They are operating internationally and it's more like a full time job or deployment.

There's not really much domestic demand for American PMC services. In Brazil the militias are locals that primarily have other income.

The US is paying a billion dollars to a PMC to secure the green zone in Iraq, but it's not like all those people will be militia in the US in a certain area.

  • defrost  2 years ago

    However US PMC's are labelled, they are private groups, not national armies, they are as well resourced if not better than a number of national military regiments of comparable size, and the fact that they operate internationally and often for other non US nations and various transnational companies makes them of greater concern than cosplaying LARP'rs.

    FWiW one general definition of militia is:

        A militia is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military.

    and PMC operate within and without that grey zone; a siginificant number of members are "civilians" that take on contract gigs for a period of time, then tap out to do other things.

    • hattmall  2 years ago

      To me the distinction is that PMC soldiers are full time. They aren't spending their days farming or being cops and lawyers or whatever. And for the most part they are officially government funded.

      The militias on the other hand are more so made up of normal people moonlighting as soldiers.

      1 reply →

gorbachev  2 years ago

Note also that personnel in companies like Blackwater are usually trained by the United States Armed Forces. They are almost all ex-military.

They can only exist, because someone else paid to train their people. The training would otherwise be far too expensive.