01/23/10
Military Outsources Rescue Ops, Secret Tagging
Tech (Updated)
By Noah Shachtman January 20, 2010
In the American military, few missions are considered more important than
rescuing missing or kidnapped troops. So it’s more than a little odd that U.S.
forces in Iraq have decided to outsource that operation to a private company.
The military’s Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan on Sunday handed out a
one year, $11.3 million, no-bid contract to Blackbird Technologies Inc.,
declaring that the firm was “the only contractor that can currently provide the
subject matter expertise needed” for personnel rescue operations.
It’s hardly the first military contract for Virginia-based Blackbird, originally
founded in 1997 as an Internet security firm. In August, Blackbird won a
massive, $450 million contract from the U.S. Navy to provide ”tagging, tracking
and locating” gear and training to a wide swath of military units. In addition,
Blackbird is currently assisting the armed forces in “locating people held
captive or hostage under duress and assessing enemy vulnerabilities.” U.S.
forces say they need the company to continue to “provid[e] staff and mission
area expertise for PR [personnel recovery] operations, serve as a fusion nexus
for intelligence operations to support PR, and operational oversight for
subordinate operations.” In addition, the military expects Blackbird to provide
everything from “crisis action planning” to “non-attributable internet
research.”
“We’re not the guys that go out and kick down doors and bring out the Jessica
Lynches of the world,” says retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Timur Eads, who
serves as Blackbird’s vice president of government relations. “We’re the guys
in the background, assembling the forensic information, bringing all the threads
together.” Sometimes, Eads tells Danger Room, that entails online research
“where you appear to be entering the Internet from somewhere else.”
Beyond that, Eads won’t say much. “I can’t give the specifics of what we do,
because the work is classified. But the reason we got this contract is because
we have people with very unique skillsets that we can quickly bring together.”
The company says they’ve already got a crack team assembled for their rescue
operations. But Blackbird is openly recruiting for “personnel recovery mission
officers,” apparently to service this contract. Only applicants with a very
specific background need apply. Blackbird wants each of the eight officers to
have 10 years of special operations missions and a clearance of “Top Secret/SSBI
with SCI eligibility.” But despite the sensitivity of this mission, and despite
the exclusive resumes applicants need to provide, these positions are only
“part-time.”
Blackbird is headquartered in Herndon, VA, with five branch offices nationwide.
Blackbird’s website states that the company is a “technology solutions provider
whose mission is to solve challenging problems for customers in the Defense,
Intelligence, and Law Enforcement Communities.” They also advertise that the
majority of their staff hold high-level clearances and handle “the most
sensitive government and commercial matters.”
Various arms of the Department of Defense have awarded at least six different
contracts to the company since 2003. The biggest, and most sensitive, of these
deals is the nearly half-billion contract for “tagging, tracking, and locating”
— military jargon for keeping tabs on troops and their potential enemies through
clandestine means.
Usually, that TTL job is accomplished by putting an infrared, radio frequency,
or satellite homing device on or around the target. The CIA, for instance,
allegedly directs its drone strikes in Pakistan with the help of infrared
beacons. Blackbird is responsible for “training all Army, Marine Corps, and
Special Operations forces in the use and application” of these TTL tags,
according to Eads. That includes “infrared beacons, satellite tags, and
over-the-horizon tags.”
The idea is to give local U.S. commanders in places like Afghanistan the ability
to “identify high-value targets in his sector.,” Eads says. That officer can
also use the tags to trace the routes and attack points used by insurgent
bombing networks. Blackbird also sells the gear to the various military
branches, and embeds a company contractor with a military unit to service the
equipment.
Eads and Blackbird were temporarily thrust into the spotlight in 2008. The
company was also involved in the “Pentagon Pundits” imbroglio — retired military
officers who were hired as news analysts for their Pentagon access. Blackbird’s
Eads opined on military matters for Fox News.
Blackbird’s new contract is yet another example of the government’s embrace of
private firms in some of its most sensitive work. Among those killed last month
by the Jordanian suicide bomber who infiltrated a C.I.A. base in Afghanistan
were two contractors from the firm formerly known as Blackwater.
– Noah Shachtman and Darius Dixon
[Photo: Noah Shachtman]
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I was surprised and a little disgusted to read this article. I knew the military was 'outsourcing' a lot of functions, but some are just so critical and so military that they should never be considered for outsourcing. Rescue and Recovery is one of those functions. I had the opportunity to support an Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron during a tour as a Special Operations Intelligence Officer in Southeast Asia. I worked closely with the "Jolly Green Giant" helicopter crews who braved the enemy gunfire and rockets to get over the survivor on the ground, and the Pararescuemen or "PJ"s who rode down on the hoist cable to treat the injured survivor, defend him and get him back up to the helicopter.
The paragraph at the start of this article with the two bolded lines were bolded by me. The first line refers to the Jolly Green crews who flew their big slow helicopters into withering ground fire to do their job, and the PJs who were as well trained as Navy SEALs but also were paramedics, and wore a badge that said "this we do so others may live".
The second bolded line refers to what the mercenaries are being paid to do, and that's what pisses me off. 37 - 38 years ago I was doing that job for captain's pay, and I was the senior man on the intel team. Along with a couple of Rescue Controllers and radiomen, we were the mission support package. We didn't need any mercenaries. Americans were down in hostile territory and very brave Americans were risking their lives to get them out. We would have gladly done the job for free. How can any honorable man charge a big contract fee for doing what duty calls for?