State Department Offering Contractors $10 Billion To Operate Overseas Drug-War Airforce

By on December 8, 2012 in News 3

With such an effort, surely this war on drugs will be won soon. Wired reports:

Unsure how your private security firm makes money as the U.S. war in Afghanistan winds down? One option: Go into the drug trade — more specifically, the lucrative business of fighting narcotics. The State Department needs a business partner to keep its fleet of drug-hunting helicopters and planes flying worldwide. You could make up to $10 billion.

Starting next month, the State Department will solicit some defense-industry feedback on a contract to help operate its 412 aircraft, based in at least eight nations, before it reopens the contract for bidding. Among the missions: “Provide pilots and operational support for drug interdiction missions such as crop spraying.”

In Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Pakistan, and Guatemala, State Department air operations mostly perform “counternarcotics and law enforcement activities,” explains State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala, and in Afghanistan it does transportation support as well.

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  • alizardx

    So the State Department wants to rent its own mercenaries? Figures that they’d do this in support of A Bad Idea. So which crony contractors get awarded the contracts?

  • BuzzCoastin

    A helicopter pilot I know was offered $300K a year plus benefits by a mercenary company; he just retired from the military where he was paid $150K plus benes. Of course they will take care of his PTSD problems too. He has found this offer very hard to resist, even though he knows he’s not mentally ready for the task.

  • http://twitter.com/polfilmblog Occupy Wear

    Such as “crop spraying?”

    They mean such as seizing large quantities of narcotics and then having a private for-profit corporation figure out what to do with the seized drugs. This is Air America, the Next Generation.