Talk:Private military company/Archives/2017

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Query

Hi can I join and be trained without ever serving in the military ? Dengus50 (talk) 09:08, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Formatting of the "Other" part

I guess the line about 1995 is last in a year-sorted list because it was added last? Should it probably be moved up? 4004 (talk) 12:33, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Reference to "Mercenaries" needs to be removed altogether

As somebody who was career military then did no insignificant amount of time as a Private Military Contractor, PMCs are most definitely NOT mercenaries. They are security guards - and a wide variety of other professions - and have never legally been allowed to perform combat operations (direct action missions, rolling up high value targets, etc) in theater. Many happen to be former military because they have been in country before and can be found be found doing static security around base perimeters, convoy security, personnel security, or providing training to host nation forces. Don't let the big muscles, guns, Oakley sunglasses, and media hype fool you. If security contractors are mercenaries, then that means the mall cop with a taser stateside is also a "mercenary." Needless to say, that isn't the case.

There certainly have been times where they have taken fire and returned fire in conflict zones, but that was only to guard the clients' interests or themselves, which is their job. They aren't actually door kicking or doing anything better than a platoon of infantry soldiers can't, because private citizens running around doing that kind of thing on behalf of governments is what got old companies like Executive Outcomes ousted before Iraq was even a thing. Other governments don't differentiate between purely defensive personnel and offensive ones, but it's an important distinction to make.

(Above content was added by Special:Contributions/2601:14B:302:698C:B498:6DDE:85D3:490F.)

I think it is important to highlight the differences between mercs and PMCs, but simply adding your assessment into the article would be wp:original research. It would be great if we had an authoritative document stating US policy regarding what missions PMCs are and are not eligible for, or better yet a secondary article summarizing the policy. Thundermaker (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but that would be nonsense. There are very valid reasons for the concerns regarding their mercenary likeness. Many are hired by the government and fight alongside the soldiers to a great extent. See for example this source: [1]. In 2010, more PMCs died in Iraq than soldiers. And a counter to your claim of them not being offensive can be put into question when reading about the Nisour Square massacre. Mall cops aren't mercenaries because they're not a force, nor are they in a combat theater. A de facto huge difference with those is, of course, also the huge difference in equipment: mall cops don't have access to self-manufactured Grizzly APCs. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 14:16, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the usage of mercenaries has generally been dropped in favor of "paramilitary." Paramilitary is used by DefenseOne which is the one of the highest quality sources for defense industry news. Even Jeremy Scahill in more recent articles (published after his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army) has started using the term paramilitary (though this has not stopped him from using the word "mercenary" to refer to certain individuals.) Seraphim System ^(talk) 21:15, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

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