Jesh Foundation

I read the want ads a few minutes ago, and saw the most ads ever looking for pilots to fly on contract for the Department of Defense. Private Military Contractors (PMC) have been riding a wave of demand and good pay for over nine years. Several agencies and corporations have been clamoring for our unique skills. But just like other markets, ours does not go up in a straight line.

First of all, I am no fortune teller. However, I have been through some slowdowns before, and it feels like one is on the way. All of those want ads seem like the last gasp of the PMC market. The last time I saw ads like that, they were advertising for corporate pilots just before the summer of 2008.

A big political change is on the way. The American people are fed up with the level of Federal spending (as am I). One of the easiest targets to cut spending is the military budget. Since many of us contractors work in off-the-wall countries in Asia, South America, and Africa, our budgets can be cut without a lot of screaming from constituents.

With the political change will come a change in the favored contracting companies. The new Congress will approve much smaller projects with new firms winning the contracts. This is a good thing. Over the years, the big contracting companies have built in lots and lots of extra people and profits. New companies will start out lean, and it will take them a couple of years to learn how to game the system for maximum profits. So, performance of the missions won’t suffer so much and dollar outlay will shrink.

What does that mean for those of us who are currently employed as PMC’s? During the last slowdown, 1992, when Clinton came to office, over two thousand contractors and analysts lost their jobs in one week. Life was grim.

I was in the middle of building a base of operations in South Texas for a counter drug gig in Peru called “Operation Snowcap”. Suddenly I was without funding and no one in Washington would return my calls. It took over a month before I found out that my project and my job had been canceled. Since my name was on the lease for the hangars, I tried to make a go of the business. I pumped av-gas, sold used aircraft, and rented out hangar space.

My boss in Washington went to work one morning only to find all of his personal belongings in a box outside his office. Then he found out that his keys no longer worked. That was all the word that he got that he had been let go. Our agency would not even admit that we had worked for them.

One pilot started driving a Pepsi truck. Another took a job driving big rigs that delivered boats. Others went back to crop dusting or corporate jobs.

We were all in limbo until 1997, when Colombia started heating up. Talking to the old timers, they went through a similar drought from 1975 to 1986.

I can’t say for certain what will happen after the November elections. But I can see a huge wave of spending cuts on the horizon. You can bet that I have a plan for getting a real job. And for those of you in the Private Military Contracting world, I would advise you to have a back-up plan.