Corporate Capture: A Survey of Military Contracting in Fiscal Year 2020
Introduction
The military-industrial-congressional complex (MIC) is the insulated triangle consisting of the Pentagon, the war industry, and Capitol Hill. This report focuses on the industrial portion: the war industry. The war industry is comprised of the corporations that sell goods and services to the U.S. Armed Forces and allied governments and regimes around the world. This report analyzes trends in military contracting, as presented in fiscal year 2020 contract announcements. The fiscal year ran October 2019 through September 2020.
The war industry drives the MIC. It lobbies Congress and funds Congressional campaigns. It funds and runs pressure groups (e.g. NDIA, AIA, AUSA) to dominate the Pentagon, administer arms fairs, and push favorable policies. It funds think tanks and corporate media to keep the narrative pro-war. It floods the Pentagon’s civilian offices with corporate executives (e.g. Esper, Secretary of Defense; Lord, Undersecretary for Acquisition & Sustainment; McCarthy, Secretary of the Army). It recruits retired generals and admirals (e.g. Dunford at Lockheed Martin, Mattis at General Dynamics, Winnefeld at Raytheon) to leverage their knowledge for profit. There is no incentive to slow or stop the wars. In this atmosphere, the Pentagon regularly lies to the public, wastes tax dollars, and opens inherently governmental jobs to Corporate America.
Executives of U.S. war corporations spread their industry across all 50 states. This spread is designed to capture Congress prior to the arrival of lobbyists and campaign finance. Industry is under no obligation to come through with the jobs numbers it cites and inflates. The primary hubs of the U.S. war industry are greater Boston; the corridor spanning Northern Virginia, through D.C., through Baltimore; greater Tampa; the Dallas-Fort Worth environs; and Southern California (Los Angeles, Carlsbad, Poway, and San Diego). When the public becomes familiar with U.S. war corporations, their activities, and their locations, the public will be in a better position to convert corporate facilities from war to fulfilling human need.
The COVID-19 pandemic flared in the United States in March 2020, six months into the fiscal year. The response by the three sides of the MIC showed how well-insulated the war machine is from the American public. The public needed monthly stipends and universal healthcare, but the U.S. government continued purchasing goods and services from the war industry, at great cost, like any other year. The Undersecretary for Acquisition & Sustainment declared the war industry to be “critical infrastructure,” with the expectation that it would “maintain a consistent, normal work schedule” during the pandemic. It did. Industry infused money into the industrial base, implemented a few safety measures, and steamed full speed ahead. And Capitol Hill passed a bloated $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act, just like any other year. (The $740 billion FY2021 budget represented a $129.5 billion increase from President Obama's last term, the FY2017 budget. This increase alone was roughly twice what Russia spends on its military.) In sum, military, industry, and Congress all chose to double-down on funding the war machine, during a pandemic.
In September, the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon had used COVID-19 funds (from the CARES Act) to purchase goods and services pertaining to military satellites, drones, gear for grunts, and jet-engine parts. That money could have paid for around 294 million N95 respirator masks or 33,333 hospital stays for COVID-19 patients, according to the National Priorities Project.
Key findings
A comprehensive review of fiscal year 2020 U.S. military contracting indicates that corporations continue to carry out all manner of jobs that troops once did—from training to transportation to intelligence.
Consulting firms took greater hold within the Pentagon in FY2020, doing many jobs that high-ranking military officers should be capable of doing.
The largest single employer of construction workers in the U.S., the military continues to hire construction firms to build up military infrastructure at home and overseas.
Contracts for fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure dwarf in funding and scope contracts for “energy conservation measures.”
Great power competition against Russia and China has paid dividends. Contracts with Corporate America for big-ticket items (e.g. nuclear weaponry, militarization of space, cyber, hypersonics, and artificial intelligence) received substantial financial investment in FY2020. Such products of war are essential to deterring and confronting great power competitors, according to the war industry’s think tanks and media affiliates.
President Donald J. Trump signs the National Defense Authorization Act at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Dec. 20, 2019.
Consulting & Office Work
Once corporations enter a portion of the U.S. military establishment, they expand, and justify their existence and further expansion by pointing to (profitable) areas where the corporation can help out (marketed as “solutions”). The corporate takeover has involved great frequency of consulting and “advisory and assistance” contracts in recent years. FY2020 was no different.
Notable office and consultancy work included advice regarding strategy and executive leadership management support, and administrative, business, and financial services within the Navy; administrative support of flying squadron operations across the Pacific; and scheduling of fighter squadron operations and supervising readiness within the Air Force. The corporations selling the aforementioned services are located in Alaska, Colorado, North Carolina, and Maryland. Meanwhile, the audit of the military is ongoing. Corporations, particularly the Big Four accounting firms, continued to sell audit services across the U.S. military establishment (e.g. KPMG auditing army funds, Ernst & Young auditing air force funds).
One corporation has advised the Commandant of the Marines, while another has assisted the Joint Staff with strategic planning and analysis. Multiple corporations worked on studies and analyses within the Department of the Army. Eight corporations (including McKinsey & Co.) helped manage and improve strategic transformation initiatives for the Air Force (seven years, worth nearly $1 billion), and 5 corporations tackled cost analysis for the Navy (five years, $249 million). That $1.24 billion could instead pay for a year of roughly 15,500 teachers in elementary schools across the country.
The two most popular consulting firms were Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte. Boston Consulting Group is the former home of Michèle Flournoy, the presumptive Defense Secretary of a Biden presidency. (Flournoy has also profited financially and professionally at Pine Island and Booz Allen Hamilton.) In the past year, BCG received four different individual contracts (1, 2, 3, 4) for spending analysis within Washington Headquarters Services (WHS). Deloitte, too, worked on cost analysis, but also focused on guiding changes to Navy enterprise networks in coordination with Naval Information Warfare Systems Command.
Inherently governmental jobs handed over to Corporate America during the fiscal year included technical and analytical services regarding policy development, decision-making, management, and systems operation within portions of U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command; coordination of efforts advising senior leaders about programs and policy (including advising senior leaders about global reconnaissance operations); and Kearney & Co. continuing analysis of Air Force missions (“linking results to the strategy, planning, and programming process” and conducting analysis and “strategy review and assessment”). These are jobs for generals, admirals, and senior Pentagon civilians. If senior military leaders cannot or will not perform these jobs, what good are they?
Training
U.S. corporations devise, create, and arrange most recruiting advertisements and campaigns that target the U.S. public. For example, in March, Blaine Warren Advertising of Las Vegas, Nevada, received an extension on its work creating recruiting ads for the Air Force reserves. (The contract allows the corporation to evaluate the effectiveness of its own work.) Benefits of joining the military include access to education, healthcare, housing, a steady paycheck, and even loan repayment. Recruitment ads tend to play up “college benefits and career training in medical and tech fields,” “as well as generous tuition benefits for a generation crushed by student debt.”With sufficient personnel recruited into the U.S. military, the troops (vessels which operate industry products and receive industry services) must then be trained. And who is to train them? After basic training, it’s mostly Corporate America. Corporations sold services to assist DOD in acquiring, managing, and sustaining Navy training systems. And a corporation was contracted to keep running the Marine’s Multi-Mission Parachute Course. A particularly lucrative category of training sold was “contracted air support services,” wherein corporations sell their work operating aerial “threats” to “enhance realism” during training. Separately, PAE ran the aerial targets program, so portions of the Air Force can test air-to-air missiles.
Trending in the recent fiscal year was the sale of training via simulators. Major sellers of training goods and services include Alion Science & Technology, CAE USA, Cubic, and FlightSafety Services Corporation. Orlando, Florida, is the war industry’s epicenter for production of training devices and simulators. Lockheed Martin has a major facility there. Applied Visual Technology Inc. and Dignitas Technologies are lesser-known sellers of such goods and services out of Orlando. The breadth is impressive. Valiant sold training services to the Army for use from Fort Polk to South Korea.
DOD continued to purchase construction services, building more and more military training facilities across the United States, such as a two-story Joint Simulation Environment facility on Edwards Air Force Base, California, and a cargo plane fuselage trainer facility on Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.
Corporations are in charge of finding ways to improve training and troop performance. In previous years, General Electric has researched how to track biological processes to improve troops’ performance from training through deployment, and KBRWyle has worked to improve selection, training, and retention of airmen. This trend kept pace in FY2020. For example, the Air Force contracted LMR Technical Group to work on reducing injuries among fighter aircrew. The Air Force Research Lab contracted Aptima to research how to improve individual and group training. Construction accompanied such contracting: The Army hired a construction firm to build the Soldier Squad Performance Research Institute in Natick, Massachusetts.
Construction
The U.S. military establishment is the largest employer of construction workers in the United States, according to my calculations based on number of contracts issued to distinct construction firms. The U.S. military issued construction contracts every week (and most duty days) during FY2020.
Construction on the east coast included a new Targeting & Surveillance System facility for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons platform in existence; and new buildings at installations where NSA reportedly has a heavy presence (Fort Gordon and Fort Meade). There was enough money for a new golf clubhouse at the U.S. military academy in West Point, New York, while our fellow humans are kicked out of their homes across the country. (It recently came to light that the U.S. Army paid $8.5 million for Austin, Texas, real estate for the top three leaders of Futures Command.)
Prominent construction contracts on the west coast included fossil fuel infrastructure at Camp Pendleton and a joint regional confinement facility (JRCF) in Tacoma, Washington. Farther west, the militarization of Hawai‘i continued, with military construction on the colony ranging from a new undersea operational training facility to new magazines for storing ordnance at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Numerous contracts were issued for U.S. military infrastructure in the Pacific, specifically Guam and the greater Marianas.
The U.S. military establishment continued to garrison the globe during the fiscal year. Construction spanned facilities in Europe (Turkey, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and North Macedonia) and the Middle East (Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait). Commonplace were massive “global contingency construction contracts,” stretching worldwide and worth billions of dollars. The military even issued a contract to Risk Mitigation Consulting to assess installation infrastructure in such locations as Souda Bay, Greece, and Deveselu, Romania.
Building more military facilities within the United States and overseas then requires the use of such infrastructure, a role the corporatized military eagerly fills, which, in turn, expands the wars and the need to justify the ever-swelling military-industrial behemoth. New infrastructure also requires new maintenance, sustainment, and repair, innumerable corporate goods and services to locate within the infrastructure, and more personnel (military and corporate) rotating through, who themselves require nonstop servicing and corporate care.
Pollution
The U.S. military establishment is the single greatest institutional polluter in the world. No other organization comes close in terms of pollution emitted (e.g. particulates, carbon, radioactive waste, synthetic chemicals, munitions). The U.S. military pollutes as it goes about its daily operations. Later on, it tasks Corporate America to tend to some of the pollution.
Environmental remediation carried out in the recent fiscal year took place across the country, from Alaska, Hawai‘i, and Guam to New Jersey, Maryland, and New York, and many places in between. Remediation is not a cure. It often involves merely burying, transporting, or diluting the toxins. The lesson (don’t pollute in the first place) is lost on U.S. militants.
Roughly fifty deals were inked during the fiscal year for Corporate America to address the military’s pollution. Environmental contracts focused on Superfund sites, pollutants release by military munitions, toxic and hazardous waste, nuclear waste, and groundwater contamination—and monitoring all of these problems.
Concerned citizens and residents ought to keep the following in mind: 1) Most of the military’s pollution is not addressed. DOD has made no effort to understand the full scope of the death and destruction from military pollution. 2) Remediation does not equal elimination. A $240 million contract for environmental remediation in the southwest United States notes candidly: Activities are “associated with returning sites to safe and acceptable levels of contamination.” While the public does not consider any pollution to be “acceptable,” the MIC is quite fine with such pollution.
Greening the Military
The MIC misdirects the public and appeals to liberal conscience by employing “green” visions. For example, in September the Navy tasked Virginia Electric & Power Co. to implement “energy conservation measures” at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. These measures included installing energy management systems and upgrading energy meters.
In the same month, the U.S. military establishment allocated over $240 million on coal, fuel tank repairs in Hawai‘i, jet fuel infrastructure in South Dakota, petroleum infrastructure worldwide, and new fueling facilities in California and Mississippi. All the while, the U.S. war industry was manufacturing (and the U.S. military was purchasing) fossil-fuel based aircraft, ships, and vehicles, and the military was carrying out fossil-fuel-based exercises and operations at home and around the world.
Such behavior occurs regularly: A PR-friendly “green” contract, surrounded by dozens and dozens of fossil-fuel-based contracts, showing the military establishment’s true colors—building more fossil fuel infrastructure while implementing expensive measures, promoted as “energy efficient,” which do nothing to alter the military’s overall polluting nature, but look great to politicians and image-conscious officers.
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) is pierside in Mayport, Fla., before their 2013 Tiger Cruise. Dwight D. Eisenhower is returning to her homeport of Norfolk, Va., after operating in the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet areas of responsibility in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.
BOSS & Prepositioned Stock
Base Operation Support Services, or BOSS, consist of the daily tasks that keep a military installation up and running, such as electrical work, fire & emergency services, grounds maintenance, janitorial services, pavement clearance, pest control, and waste management. This work was done by the troops prior to the Pentagon’s embrace of neoliberal economic policy. Now, it is often done by corporations.
BOSS sales during FY2020 spanned the country, from facilities in Maryland to California. Alaskan Native Corporations carry out some BOSS work. For example, Alutiiq BOSS at Naval Air Station China Lake, California, and ASRC BOSS at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Major construction and project management firms have recently entered into the BOSS game, such as Jacobs running BOSS at Naval Station Mayport, Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, and naval facilities in Washington state.
The provision of corporate goods and services to U.S. military installations overseas is one of the main reasons the U.S. has so many bases around the globe. BOSS sold during FY2020 involved such overseas locations as Bahrain, Diego Garcia, Guam, Iraq, Singapore, Spain, and Turkey. DynCorp sold services in support of military operations and exercises in southeast Asia, including Cambodia, East Timor, and the Philippines. Vectrus was the biggest single corporate supplier of BOSS. Its work overseas involved U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Guantánamo Bay, and Kuwait.
Prepositioned stock are industry products sitting at strategic sites around the world. Monitoring and sustaining prepositioned stock are jobs that industry has taken over from the military, at great taxpayer expense. AECOM sold supply and transportation logistics related to prepositioned stock in Kuwait and Qatar and logistics support in Germany. Look for Amentum to assume most of this work. Corporate titans created Amentum when AECOM sold its “management services” product line to American Securities LLC and private equity in January 2020. Amentum is now on track to purchase DynCorp, known for its BOSS, maintenance, and mercenary activities. In April, the Army paid Amentum for prepositioned stock logistics services in Germany, and in July the corporation received more money for the same services.
Transportation
Transportation of military personnel and war products around the world is almost entirely corporatized. U.S. Transportation Command is the military unit charged with overseeing this transportation. It contracts heavily with U.S. corporations. Popular airlines, such as Delta and American sell their transportation services alongside major delivery corporations such as FedEx and UPS. The Worldwide Airlift Services Program hands over a substantial portion of domestic and international airlift to the corporate world. DOD issued a contract for that program (five years, $5.7 billion) to move personnel, cargo, and supplies. DOD also issued task orders for charter airlift services (under the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program, another way for corporations to perform government functions under the guise of helping the Department of Defense, which is overextended in its global presence.) The DOD Freight Transportation Services program, with Crowley Government Services in the lead (estimated $328 million for one year), focuses on road and rail transport within the U.S.
Even the information technology keeping track of Transportation Command’s operations is corporate (e.g. Jacobs IT infrastructure at Scott Air Force Base, Northrop Grumman advice & analysis on the technology keeping track of deployed goods and services, or CACI logistics system covering worldwide military matériel and ordnance).
The main corporations selling helicopter transport of personnel and cargo for U.S. military operations in Africa and Asia are Berry Aviation, Construction Helicopters, Erickson Helicopters, and Phoenix Air Group. All were issued contracts or contract extensions in the fiscal year. Exemplary, the CEO of Erickson Helicopters is a former army pilot turned profiteer (a rising star in private equity; then executive positions in DynCorp, IAP, and now Erickson).
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Army Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visit U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., Oct. 12, 2017. DoD photo by Army Sgt. Amber I. Smith
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
The Pentagon has parsed the world into geographical areas of responsibility in order to better manage the imperium. CENTCOM is the overarching military unit in charge of the greater Middle East.
Arab countries within CENTCOM fall into two main categories: anti-democratic regimes within which the U.S. military has enormous bases, stores matériel, launches air- and watercraft, and stations troops (Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE) and countries the U.S. military has turned into warzones (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen).
The war industry makes a lot of money selling to anti-democratic Arab regimes and selling to the U.S. military establishment for use within the countries governed by anti-democratic Arab regimes.
The U.S. war industry sold to every single anti-democratic regime in the Middle East during FY2020, except for Syria (where Sunni jihadists use weaponry from U.S. war industry that has been sold to U.S. government agencies, and where U.S. industry products such as Raytheon missiles and General Atomics drones have been used).
All major U.S. war corporations sold to anti-democratic Arab regimes during FY2020. Lowlights included Boeing helicopter deals with multiple regimes (e.g. helicopter retrofits and plenty of missiles to the Saudi regime, “Apache” helicopter work to the UAE); Boeing bombs for Apartheid Israel; General Dynamics tanks for Kuwait; Lockheed Martin helicopter computers for the Saudi regime; Northrop Grumman radar data processors for Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE; Northrop Grumman missile motors for Egypt and Jordan; Lockheed Martin rocket launcher parts and Raytheon artillery data systems for Jordan; Lockheed Martin rocket launcher parts for the UAE and Jordan; and Raytheon sustainment of radar associated with the UAE’s surface-to-air missile systems.
Lesser known war corporations selling to anti-democratic regimes included AM General vehicle upgrades to Jordan; CDM Constructors building an aircraft shelter for Israel; Clayton maintenance on Egypt’s Lockheed Martin helicopters; Cubic logistics on its aircraft training systems for Egypt, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia; General Electric aircraft engines for Qatar; Kay & Associates aircraft maintenance; and L3Harris digital map computers for Bahrain’s Boeing F/A-18 aircraft.
From east to west—Booz Allen Hamilton technical support for Pakistan’s Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft, and Sierra Nevada Corp. sustainment of Lebanon’s A-29 aircraft—the U.S. war industry was there, further militarizing floundering democracies.
Human rights violations are not a concern from the MIC’s point of view. The worst human rights violators in the region, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, are the chief purchasers of weaponry from the U.S. war industry.
A few illustrative goods and services, of many, sold to the U.S. military for use in the Middle East included DynCorp aircraft maintenance on U.S. Army helicopters in Afghanistan, General Dynamics IT staffing across the region, Leidos operational and analytical services to the U.S. Marine Corps presence in Bahrain, and Raytheon training devices for the U.S. Army in Kuwait.
One of the ongoing benefits of the destruction and occupation of Iraq has been rebuilding the Iraqi military by selling it goods and services from the U.S. war industry. Sales to Iraq included Colt rifles, Lockheed Martin radar, sustainment of a Lockheed Martin air defense system, Navistar vehicles, Northrop Grumman logistics on Textron Cessna aircraft, Rapiscan work on vehicle scanning systems, Scientia Global radio equipment and training, and Spartan Air Academy work on training aircraft.
Space & Nuclear Weaponry
Great power competition is the tame name given to the new Cold War, which features D.C. facing off against Beijing and Moscow. From an industry perspective, great power competition is preferable to the global war on terror because competing against major industrial powers such as China and Russia can better justify the purchase of very expensive products of war (e.g. aircraft carriers, submarines, nuclear weaponry, space launch, satellites). Great power competition also engenders increased sales from the U.S. war industry to allied governments in the Pacific (e.g. Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei).
The space business sector of war is entirely corporate. Corporations such as the joint venture RGNext (comprised of General Dynamics and Raytheon) run the Eastern and Western Ranges, where military satellites are launched and ballistic missiles are tested. The Aerospace Corp. pretty much runs the Space & Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, the epicenter of U.S. militarization of space. LinQuest has helped develop Space Command and sells a variety of space-related technical services for use at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, Los Angeles Air Force Base, and elsewhere. L3Harris runs the National Space Defense Center on Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, and many of the ground-based sites interacting with satellites. ManTech administers many compartmented and special access programs involving classified space activities across California and Colorado. Corporations such as Iridium Satellite sell commercial satellite services that the U.S. military uses. The big four – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman – sell most of the goods and services that develop and launch satellites. SpaceX is fairly new to selling launch services to the U.S. military. All of these corporations received space contracts during fiscal year 2020.
The $1.7-$2.0 trillion “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is underway. In FY2020, the war industry sold goods and services for the nuclear triad (the three legs of which are intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bomber aircraft). A few examples of profitable sales included Boeing ICBM cryptography upgrades; Draper Lab guidance units for the Trident II; Lockheed Martin Trident II missile production and development; General Dynamics submarine alteration and development; L3Harris flight test instrumentation; and Raytheon command & control system for Air Force nuclear-armed bombers. Demonstrating the thorough nature of corporatization of government, Systems Planning & Analysis sold engineering services and programmatic support for nuclear weapons in such areas as policy, planning, compliance, and safety.
Modernization includes building more nuclear facilities and upgrading existing ones. Pertinent contracts included construction at Hill Air Force Base of a mission integration facility for intercontinental ballistic missiles, and comprehensive construction at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which is home to many such missiles.
The biggest nuke-related sale in the fiscal year was Northrop Grumman (the lone bidder) getting picked to develop an entirely new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The cost? Roughly $110.6 billion, according to the Pentagon’s internal estimates, and potentially as high as $264 billion. What could $110.6 billion have purchased? It could have paid for 3,544,068 Americans receiving $600 weekly stipends for a whole year. It could have paid for a year of 1,990,344 jobs working on U.S. infrastructure. Instead, such billions are going to brand new weaponry that can kill us all.
In a functioning democracy, the people (not corporations) would influence what is produced in their town. This principle applies to the war industry as a whole, but is particularly vital when the product produced is nuclear weaponry, which can end human life on Earth. Towns where such nuclear work takes place (e.g. Bremerton, Washington; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Cape Canaveral, Florida; Kings Bay, Georgia; Layton, Utah; Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Sunnyvale, California), take heed.
Missile Defense Agency
With exaggerated great power threats comes the need to defend against those threats’ perceived capabilities. Anti-ballistic missile technology is located within the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), an organization established after the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.
ABM technology sold during this past fiscal year included Boeing’s sustainment of the ground-based midcourse defense (1, 2, 3, 4), Lockheed Martin’s production of THAAD (1, 2), and Raytheon’s sale of its Standard Missile-3 (1, 2, 3). Other notable products sold were the maturation of technology, and design and partial demonstration of prototypes for hypersonic & ballistic tracking space sensors.
Corporations rake in money through ongoing contracts. For example, on 1 September, Lockheed Martin received $8.1 million for work on its Aegis system. That is not a lot of money when viewed alongside the Pentagon’s bloated budget. However, that $8.1 million increased Lockheed Martin’s overall contract from $3,293,067,205 to $3,301,224,998. A product such as Aegis offers Lockheed Martin endless ability to sell upgrades, technology insertions, and modifications, featuring all manner of goods and services. Similarly, Raytheon received a mere $10.1 million for work on its Standard Missile-3 (SM-3); the overall contract increased from $2,530,694,883 to $2,540,843,060. Like an adept fisherman, corporations hook the Pentagon and reel in tax dollars for years.
Grotesquely, TOTE Services received millions for another year of operating and maintaining the Sea-Based X-Band radar, which is part of the overall ballistic missile defense system. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2015 that this “giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop.” Yet, as of 2020, it’s still out there, sucking up tax dollars.
Source: Economic Development Council
Platforms
When you or I see a ship or an aircraft, we see just that: a ship or an aircraft. Corporate executives see a platform upon which they can pile goods and services. For example, the drone known as the MQ-9 Reaper is a General Atomics product. But many corporations pile goods and services onto that platform. L3Harris makes the training system. Honeywell makes the engines. Raytheon makes the targeting system. System Dynamics International sells services involving testing and engineering. AECOM has maintained the drones. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing make the bombs and missiles. A single platform begets debauched profiteering.Expensive, underperforming platforms continued to be funded during FY2020.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 is a mediocre aircraft with hundreds of problems. And it costs a fortune. Nevertheless, the corporation received roughly 50 distinct payments (contracts, options, and modifications) for work on the F-35 during the fiscal year. Sales included “durability testing” and work upgrading the dismal maintenance device known as ALIS. The corporation even got money to consolidate “known issues, funding and requirements on a single contract vehicle to ensure the most fiscally responsible business deals for customers.” The roughly 50 deals that Lockheed Martin received in the fiscal year regarding the F-35 are in addition to the dozens of other major corporations that work on the aircraft (e.g. BAE Systems countermeasures, General Dynamics IT, IDSC Holdings tools).
In September alone, DOD allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to the aircraft, paying for Raytheon engines; Lockheed Martin data link functional review, diminishing manufacturing sources redesign, material for production (roughly $709.8 million), and work on the production facility in Cameri, Italy; BAE Systems simulation for F-35 electronic warfare; and Boston Consulting Group helping to “meaningfully accelerate progress and improve overall outcomes, with an emphasis on [F-35] affordability and availability.”
Plenty of other expensive, underperforming platforms (e.g. the Littoral Combat System, new Ford-class aircraft carriers) remain unexamined.
Information Technology
Whether measured terms of contract dollars allocated or number of individual contracts, information technology is the number one business sector of the war industry.
Hundreds of corporations form the corporatized IT infrastructure of the U.S. military. Major war corporations that specialize in IT include Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Carahsoft. Familiar corporations include HP and Oracle. Subtler corporations, from Nexagen to Unisys Corp., are rising stars. Telecoms such as AT&T, Motorola, and Sprint, sell regularly to the U.S. military, including to such belligerent units as the Naval Information Warfare Center and Space Force.
No job is off limits. IBM is now running such Air Force civil engineering fields as policy and oversight.
The geographical breadth of corporate IT operations within the U.S. military is stunning: From Abacus Technology in Qatar and the UAE, to SAIC in South Korea.
DOD’s vast computing power belongs to the IT business sector. Cray and Liqid worked on modernizing DOD’s High Performance Computing, contracting in February (3, 14) and August (11, 31), respectively. In previous years, corporations such as IBM and InuTeq have sold such services.
The dollar amounts are massive. Exemplary are the December 2019 contract (10 years, up to $13.4 billion) to multiple corporations for IT systems and software development, and the August 2020 contract (10 years, $13 billion) to multiple corporations for IT infrastructure. $13 billion could pay off the student debt of nearly 393,940 adults (assuming a $33,000 average debt).
DOD is drowning in data, a problem partially caused by corporations pushing a variety of distinct IT goods and services, many of which cannot communicate with one another. (DOD has no coherent IT acquisition strategy.) A major trend in IT contracts in recent years has been corporations selling goods and services to merge or blend all of this data into a somewhat comprehensive format. Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2) takes this trend to a whole ’nother level. JADC2 is an industry project to eventually connect all relevant military sensors—from on-the-ground shooters to satellites. Justified by pointing to the current bogeymen (China and Russia), JADC2 is marketed as supposedly building a bigger, smoother picture for decision-making. Two contracts for JADC2 were issued ($950 million in May, and a different $950 million in July) to mature the early stages of such technology. Rounding out the fiscal year, over a dozen corporations, including Amazon, were awarded a five-year, potential $950 million contract for further work on JADC2.
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, takes questions from the audience during a discussion on the military's role in cyberspace and the threat that cyberattacks pose at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., June 27, 2013.
Cyber
War industry sales of “cyber” typically involve the IT protection of weaponry and the military’s computer networks. A good example of this is the February contract to Dark Wolf Solutions for software penetration tests and “adversarial assessment” at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. (It is fashionable for corporations to use the word “Solutions” in their name.) “Cyber” products only started being sold to the U.S. military establishment a few years back. Now cyber goods and services are sold regularly.
Prominent units purchasing substantial cyber goods and services in the fiscal year included Lackland Air Force Base, Texas; Fort Gordon, Georgia; and Los Angeles Air Force Base. The first two locations have historical ties to NSA; the latter is the epicenter of U.S. militarization of space. Aside from the well-known war corporations, sellers of cyber products include Chenega and Tyonek (Alaskan Native Corporations) and Vencore Labs (now known as Perspecta). Alaskan Native Corporations contract with the federal government on favorable terms, and typically sell a wide variety of goods and services; in one sense, they act as “body shops,” provisioning personnel (“contractors”) with skills and clearances that the military establishment craves.
Perhaps the most notable cyber contract went to Bushido Associates for “cyber threat analysis and reporting” for the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF), Chantilly, Virginia. This contract included the provision of intelligence analysts. This contract highlights the expansionary nature of MIC bureaucracies. They are created (NCIJTF is barely twelve years old), and they balloon; all the while industry’s think tanks hype the threat that said bureaucracy was established to combat, as industry sells goods and services to fill those bureaucracies. Its products are marketed as helping military defeat the supposed threat. This leitmotif applies in particular to anything involving “intelligence.”
Some cyber sales involve operation and maintenance of offensive and defensive cyber capabilities within the U.S. Armed Forces. Relevant sales in the recent fiscal year included BAE Systems (a British corporation with many branches in the U.S.) “management augmentation services” at U.S. Army Cyber Command, Fort Gordon, Georgia.
The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is a major consumer of cyber goods and services. In January 2020, Booz Allen Hamilton sold services to AFRL that help design and develop defensive cyber operations technology in addition to utilizing the cloud to automate processes and develop Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning technology.
Hypersonics
Hypersonic weaponry is any rocket, missile, or aircraft that can travel five or more times the speed of sound. Government spending on hypersonics, at great cost (.pdf), is regularly justified by citing Chinese military testing and claims from Russian President Vladimir Putin. That’s all it takes.
There were about a dozen contracts issued pertaining to hypersonics in FY2020. The main purchasers were the Air Force Research Lab, DARPA, and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Sales of hypersonics goods and services were limited to the biggest war corporations, as they have the capital to lead such research and development. The only outlier was an academic arrival: the University of Notre Dame developing a wind tunnel for the Navy. Notable contracts, just from September, included Battelle manufacturing composite materials and Raytheon’s work on hypersonic defenses.
Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence
Machine learning, or artificial intelligence (AI), is one of the many business sectors of war to receive a strong funding boost as a result of great power competition against Russia and China. (The Pentagon needs bad guys to justify its enormous budget, extensive legal authorities, and bureaucratic turf.) AI contracts in the fiscal year were spread fairly evenly across the Air Force Research Lab, DARPA, NAVWAR, and Army Contracting Command.
Battelle Memorial Institute is best known for its research in the nuclear weapon complex, the microelectronics field, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear labs. In January 2020, Battelle was contracted (via other transaction agreement, a way to get money more rapidly into corporate hands) to work on software for continuous autonomous military operations.
Booz Allen Hamilton is a top twenty war corporation. In January, the Air Force Research Lab contracted BAH to develop technology for defensive cyber operations in addition to utilizing a cloud-based engine for automation and to develop machine learning technologies. Four months later, the corporation was tasked (netting a cool $800 million) with developing AI enabled products (ultimately for warfighting) and helping embed AI in military decision-making and analyses. This work is for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), the War Department’s hub for all matters related to AI. (This is a common pattern: The Pentagon establishes a unit, and corporations soon swoop in to capture most of the unit’s work. It happened recently with Futures Command—established 2018, and by July 2020 [the 21st and 28th] corporations had assumed control of its basic functions. It also happened with the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s main public liaising link to Silicon Valley: JAB Innovative Solutions assumed substantial scientific and technical consulting work within DIU in February 2020, so DIU could meet its “core mission” “to increase DOD access to leading edge commercial technologies and technical talent.”) The JAIC contract announcement assures us that these AI products “will leverage the power of DOD data to enable a transformational shift across the DOD that will give the U.S. a definitive information advantage to prepare for future warfare operations.” Unsubstantiated claims like this appear regularly in DOD contracting announcements.
The corporations carrying out the AI research and development represent a decent cross-section of war corporations. In August, Deloitte was tasked to design and build the Joint Common Foundation AI development environment for JAIC, showing the stunning extent to which consultancy firms have expanded their reach inside the business of war.
ECS Federal is a strong, subtle corporation. In 2018 it was acquired by ASGN, though it still operates as a subsidiary. In recent years ECS Federal has worked on Google’s controversial Project Raven and a variety of IT projects for the Pentagon. In February and April 2020, ECS was contracted to research and develop artificial intelligence algorithms.
AI applications vary: developing ways to experiment and develop AI datasets; supporting DARPA’s AI efforts (engineering, mathematical, scientific); and researching implementation of an AI initiative to support militarized scientific research.
Progeny Systems Corp. is a private corporation specializing in hardware for undersea warfare, torpedo kits, maintenance management tools for ships, and submarine software. In March, Progeny was contracted for R&D on “Automation Entity Classification in Video Using Soft Biometrics” for the Office of Naval Research. In exchange for DOD money, Progeny is to further develop its corporate capabilities (machine learning, image processing, computer vision) with the goal of eventually integrating them into operational military systems. Though it has over a dozen offices nationwide and rakes in millions of dollars in government contracts annually, Progeny contracts as a small business.
Where there’s money to be made unethically, there’s U.S. academia. Carnegie Mellon University is developing a “new translational research methodology” that uses AI to “minimize time spent on low-impact, high-time activities.” Perspecta Labs and the University of California at Berkeley are working on a software prototype that would use AI to help the Air Force better design cyber tools. Vanderbilt University is developing a similar software prototype for AI-assisted designing. This brings us to academia.
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Via JHU.
Academia
Academia’s role within the MIC is threefold: engage in substantial research and development of military and espionage technologies, serve as a holding station for MIC elites, and accept philanthropy from the super-rich who have profited from war, thereby whitewashing crimes.
Academic institutions are an integral part of the U.S. war industry. Major players include Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech Applied Research Corporation, Utah State, and the University of Dayton Research Institute. The most frequent purchasers of goods and services from academia during FY2020 were the Air Force Research Lab, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, and the Office of Naval Research. Altogether, there were 55 contracts issued to U.S. academia during FY2020.
Relatively new entrants into the lucrative world of militarized academia included, in FY2020, the University of Connecticut researching ways to predict how aerospace materials perform during harsh temperature fluctuations, and Montana State University studying how to build aircraft using carbon fiber.
Other salient contracts of militarized academia include the University of Southern Florida collaborating with Special Operations Command to prototype unique technologies, and Carnegie Mellon University researching an artificial intelligence “innovation framework.”
Academic work for DARPA included university labs (in Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, and New York) developing ways to recognize deep fakes, and Stanford University researching the “securing of our national internet infrastructure.” Aside from militarized academic research, over 100 academic institutions sold their services to educate enlisted military members and help establish the U.S. Naval Community College.
Notable contracts from September included SUNY researching optical microsystems for DARPA, USC and Georgia Tech researching open source software and systems “enabling secure 5G and subsequent mobile networks such as 6G” for DARPA, New Mexico State supporting information operations, and three institutes (Johns Hopkins University, UC-Davis, and the University of Pittsburgh) developing new treatments for spinal cord injuries. Reducing the physical casualties of war is one way to lower the body count while postponing the period of political and educational reconciliation necessary to end the wars.
Intelligence
As recent as the early 1990s, it was considered sacrilege in the corridors of many agencies to have contractors involved in intelligence matters. Contractors were rare in most agencies. Not anymore. U.S. intelligence (both civilian and military) is corporatized.
Corporate America knows that linguists are the intel backbone of any decent intelligence organization. Many major and minor corporations are “body shops,” hoarding contractor personnel, particularly linguists, with active security clearances and selling their services to sundry intelligence organizations. In December, CWU Inc. sold linguist support services for Fort Gordon, Georgia, which is reportedly home to a lot of NSA activities. In March, Mission Essential LLC sold linguist services (e.g. translation, interpretation, transcription) for use in military operations in Africa Command. In my experience, military and corporate linguists vary greatly in their competence and motivation. Many don’t understand their target language very well and are therefore assigned very specific missions requiring a limited set of repeating vocabulary (e.g. monitoring air defenses of a specific enemy base).
Funding and technology are the two strengths of U.S. intelligence. Year in and year out, contracting announcements reflect an overwhelming focus on developing new technology and gizmos, at great cost. In this recent fiscal year, the Air Force Research Lab purchased services to help create software that can collect sensor information from smartphones, and software to help manage the collection process. Analysts flood the intelligence community, often performing redundant, overlapping, or superfluous tasks. Yorktown Systems Group sold operations support at Fort Meade, including predictive modeling and trend analyses regarding “global asymmetric threats.” In a related field, Dataminr (which has helped surveil anti-racism protests) repeatedly sold (1, 2, 3) open source intelligence: “web-based mobile and email alerting of events and breaking news based on global sources of publically (sic) available information…”At the same time, Geospark Analytics is developing situational awareness technology that uses artificial intelligence to identify and forecast “emerging events on a global scale.” Don’t forget about airborne collection: Northrop Grumman sold spare parts for the Army’s Guardrail system. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin was put in charge of “modernizing” the Office of Naval Intelligence Measurement & Signature Intelligence Enterprise for Global Acoustic Intelligence system.
And, of course, there is intelligence construction. (Consult the Washington Post’s Top Secret America for background information on the nature of intelligence-related construction.) Notable construction in the recent fiscal year was a new National Air & Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) Intelligence Production Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is thoroughly corporatized. Corporatization of DIA missions during FY2020 included work in its Science & Technology Directorate (five years, $990,000,000), its National Media Exploitation Center, and its Missile & Space Intelligence Center. Corporations also run planning and analysis of DIA’s workforce, sell technical support to DIA, conduct polygraph examinations and background investigations, work on technology transfer analysis and assessments at DIA’s Charlottesville branch, and develop and run software that aids “in the identification of intelligence requirements, management of priorities, planning and production of intelligence products, enterprise data analytics, communication and other associated processes.” There is no reason, aside from greed and profit, that such task can’t be carried out by government personnel.
Special Operations Forces
The core of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) are shooters trained to perform well under great physical stress. The most famous of SOCOM shooters are Navy SEALS and Army Special Forces. Other SOCOM grunts include Air Force pararescue and Marine Raiders. Support within SOCOM includes helicopter pilots, psychological operations teams, and signals intelligence units. The main SOCOM hubs are Tampa, Florida; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Fayetteville, North Carolina; and San Diego, California. SOCOM headquarters is in Tampa at MacDill Air Force Base.
Corporations selling goods and services to U.S. special operations units in the fiscal year spanned the United States (e.g. from Honolulu, Hawai‘i, to Anchorage, Alaska; from Fullerton, California, to Orofino, Idaho; from Wichita, Kansas, to Columbus, Ohio; from Londonderry, New Hampshire, to Burlington, Massachusetts), though many corporations were clustered around the main SOCOM hubs.
Arming and equipping U.S. special operations forces has grown from niche commerce to multi-billion-dollar feast. A capitalist advocacy group known as Enterprise Florida claims “defense spending” amounts to roughly $7.5 billion in the greater Tampa area. The Tampa Bay Economic Development Council says the number is higher: “$14 billion military industry has developed around areas such as cybersecurity and information technology, intelligence and analysis, training and simulation, and advanced manufacturing…” A lot of money is up for grabs.
Capitalist groups stress the benefit: jobs are created. They ignore the downsides: Wall Street greed, sky-high CEO bonuses, and perpetuation of war. They also ignore the fact that spending on areas such as healthcare, education, or renewable energy creates more jobs than spending on military or war.
Corporatized SOF training in the recent fiscal year included ongoing services for Naval Special Warfare Preparatory Course in Great Lakes, Illinois; development of a prototype training center at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico; prototyping, training, operations, and rehearsal; planning & preview systems, mission simulators, and rehearsal for training; role-players at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; freefall parachuting services; ongoing survival, evasion, resistance, escape (SERE) training; and flying operations support at multiple bases and ongoing operations and maintenance at Melrose Air Force Range, New Mexico.
Aircraft for transportation, bombing, or reconnaissance form a sizable portion of industry sales to SOCOM. Of course, the U.S. military establishment doesn’t just pay for the craft itself, but for all manner of follow-on goods and services (e.g. configuration management, contractor logistics services, cybersecurity enhancements, data, diagnosis, engine overhauls, engineering support, logistics, general maintenance, production costs, program management, spares, technical services, testing, and training).
Aircraft deals for SOCOM in the past fiscal year focused on upgrades, logistics, and maintenance: maintenance and new avionics for aircraft often used in parachuting training; Raytheon research and production of avionics; maintenance and modification of C-130 aircraft at Hurlburt Field, Florida; Lockheed Martin upgrades to C-130 operational flight programs; work on AC-130 gunship turrets by Canadian Commercial Corp.; Sierra Nevada Corp. countermeasures systems, marketed as helping to protect aircrews from enemy radar and missile systems; different L3Harris work on countermeasures; components and parts for Boeing MH-47G helicopters (1, 2); Sierra Nevada Corp. pilotage systems; and Leidos’ work on reconnaissance aircraft, mostly in Bridgewater, Virginia.
Other transport were United States Marine (Gulfport, MS) assault craft, and ongoing truck upgrades by Battelle and ground mobility vehicles by General Dynamics.
Ordnance included work on Boeing bombs and Raytheon munitions.
A “Support Our Mercenaries” rally outside the CACI head office. Via Creative Commons.
Corporations bedeck special operations forces like sporting goods companies outfit all-star athletes. Kit sold over the fiscal year included armor, aiming lasers, scopes, and detonators. Communications equipment included CACI systems (1, 2); Cubic inflatable satellite communications terminals and equipment; infrastructure stateside and in Afghanistan; and plenty of other goods and services (A, B, C) from Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Wickr.
Equipment and training can be quite expensive. Recent contract awards included separate awards (1, 2) of up to $950 million for equipment, training, and product support, and an award of up to $4 billion for equipment (featuring the ever-present Atlantic Diving Supply and five other corporations). On what would you rather spend $4 billion? How about 100,000 four-year university scholarships?
Some contract announcements are opaque, such as Raptor Training Services (Oviedo, FL) getting millions of dollars to “accommodate known and emerging critical special operations forces requirements.” Opacity prevents the U.S. public from understanding the full nature of the war machine.
Curious contracts included feed for animals used in medical training, University of South Florida research and development, and Joint Special Operations Command’s first appearance in DOD contract announcements: Technology Service Corp. aircraft, turrets and spares for the Long Endurance Aircraft, part of a larger JSOC intel program.
SOCOM is a sinkhole swallowing tax dollars. Four corporations were awarded up to $245 million in March for five years of “logistics support, equipment related and knowledge based services in support of Naval Special Warfare Command” in the U.S. and overseas. The biggest contracts were $950 million to 46 corporations for “subject matter expertise and knowledge-based services” in support of “education, training, engineering, technical, professional, administrative, management support, program management and other requirements.” (More corporations were added later.) A near-$1-billion contract for drone-related goods and services was issued in June to six corporations, including Boeing, L3Harris, and Textron. ($1 billion could pay for one year of solar electricity at over 1,600,000 households.)
Endless war requires endless provision of goods and services, and no congressperson would dare push back against war profiteering in the militarized society we, the people, have allowed the MIC to entrench.
Domestic construction related to special operations forces has increased dramatically in recent years. This trend continued in fiscal year 2020: a special tactics squadron operations facility at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; special operations training facilities at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Naval Special Warfare operations support facilities and training facilities in Coronado, California; and an assessment & selection complex at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. More facilities lead to more use and abuse of special operations forces by MIC elites, sending shooters overseas again and again, where they engage in horrific behavior, terrorize the working class and peasantry of other nations, and commit war crimes.
War is one of the best ways for capitalists to make a profit (for example, the investment management corporation BlackRock is a top holder of Lockheed Martin stock). Capitalism demands infinite growth. Wars must be created, sustained, and expanded. Goods and services must be sold to the U.S. government and allied governments and regimes. This system is incapable of reforming itself. Death, pollution, and destruction will continue until the U.S. public does something about it.
Under the existing system, the working-class employees of war corporations have no say in what to produce, how to produce it, or to whom to sell it. Those decisions are made by corporate executives, often at the headquarters hundreds of miles away. The working class understands this. For example, General Electric workers have held protests demanding jet engine factories make ventilators.
Democratizing the workplace, by which the working-class employees make the business decisions, is the most direct way to stop the wars. Once the working class holds the means of production, they can set to work using the company’s facilities and infrastructure to produce goods and services for human need, not war. Drawing from a rich history of labor organizing, they will work alongside neighborhood councils and regional bodies in order to care for humans and the natural world. They understand that it is not in their interest to produce goods and services that ultimately harm the working class in Colombia, Iraq, the Philippines, and the dozens of other countries where the U.S. ruling class sends the troops. The wars will peter out overnight, because the industrial impetus—the profit motive—will be gone.
It is incumbent upon us all to learn about the military-industrial-congressional complex so we can be in the best position to dismantle it.
Christian Sorensen (@cp_sorensen) is the author of Understanding the War Industry.
His distillations of military contracts and corporate activity are available at www.ibpoffices.com, soon to be www.warindustrymuster.com. His analysis does not represent SPRI or the U.S. government.