Military Contracting

US operations in Afghanistan involved extensive logistical efforts to supply more than 400 military bases dispersed across the country, hampered by Afghanistan's mountainous terrain and poor road infrastructure. The US military's strategy was to outsource nearly all trucking operations to private contractors, resulting in contracts valued at $2.16 billion from March 2009 to September 2011. This program, known as Host Nation Trucking, required contractors to provide their own security, often leading to payments to local warlords and insurgent groups for protection, inadvertently funding those the US was combating. Convoys faced severe risks such as ambushes, IED attacks, and kidnappings. Contractors, unable to field sufficient defensive forces, resorted to paying for safe passage, further fueling corruption. This situation led to a congressional investigation, revealing significant inefficiency, cost overruns, and the detrimental impact of these logistics practices on US counterinsurgency objectives. The military, however, was stymied in trying to find a solution to this problem.