CHART: Number Of Contractors In Afghanistan Will Surge As U.S. Troops Withdraw

By Guest Blogger on Jun 29, 2011 at 10:10 am

Our guest blogger is CAP Visiting Fellow Pratap Chatterjee.

The number of contractors in Afghanistan is likely to increase significantly in the next year as the Obama administration pulls back some of the extra 68,000 troops that it has dispatched there since January 2009.

Typically, the U.S. pays one contractor to support every soldier that has deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. The ratio of contractors to troops increases dramatically during a military surge as well as during a drawdown, and often stays higher than troop levels when military numbers are low, i.e. down to 30,000-50,000.