Underlining Oversight

The Army will never move away from a “significant reliance” on contractors, despite efforts to in-source more jobs and provide greater contractor oversight, the Army secretary said earlier this week.

Pete Geren told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee on Tuesday that the Army is taking significant strides to reduce the number of contractors on the battlefield.

“When soldiers deploy, now it's roughly one to one. One soldier deployed for one contractor. We are working on building up . . . both the civilian and military side to reverse that trend,” he said.

But, the Army will never “find ourselves in the position where we don't have a significant reliance on contractors,” Geren added. “There are limits, when you consider the stresses on the rest of the force, how much of that we are going to be in-sourcing.”

Consequently, the Army is seeking to provide greater oversight, he said.