Ginger Baker had one.
April 12, 2016 6:27 PM   Subscribe

Inside Erik Prince’s Treacherous Drive to Build a Private Air Force
Jeremy Scahill continues keeping tabs on Mr Blackwater; Xe; Reflex Responses Erik Prince now Chairman of the Chinese Fsgroup set to loot Africa.
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posted by adamvasco (42 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Disgusting.
posted by bird internet at 7:02 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is it weird that I think he looks a bit like Martin Freeman?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:06 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Botchev violated the terms of his probation and fled the U.S.

Wouldn't that mean Erik Prince is aiding and abetting a felon? Surely that would merit the attention of federal authorities.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 7:33 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Surely that would merit the attention of federal authorities.

I believe the appropriate solution is two FPPs down.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:45 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


GLOBAL GEO SURVEY - T7-SAW
posted by valkane at 7:48 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


You can't convince me Prince doesn't have some level of US black-ops involvement still. The CIA is still running him as an agent against Chinese in-roads into Africa. Or something like that. You don't get away with as much clearly illegal shit as he has without official backing. He knows where all the literal bodies are buried from the worst abuses of the Iraq war, that's not someone who the US security state is ever going to let walk away into the fully private sector, and also not going to prosecute to where he spills it all to the press.

Or he's become immune to prosecution simply because of what he knows. Another gift that keeps on giving from the Bush administration. The government can't act against him legally for fear of what he could say, and can't really stop his Archer-esque private spy agency antics either, short of a drone strike.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:18 PM on April 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


Yeah, I can't see how the Chinese could possibly actually trust him. I mean, would you trust him? I certainly wouldn't. But then again, I'm not part of the intelligence community. Really. No, really.
posted by valkane at 8:22 PM on April 12, 2016


Erik Prince is a no-kidding mercenary. Trusting him is not part of the contract. Providing him with money and material so he can staff you in an unfair fight is.

George W. Bush hired and trusted no-kidding mercenaries. They were highly-trained, expertly skilled, completely professional fuckups from day one. They pretty much lost us two wars.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:36 PM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


If only Mr. Prince were into something like Habitat for Humanity. If only Mr. Prince used his awesome skill, no skill really, awesome connections and money conduits for something worthwhile, but no; he has an aptitude for awfulness. He is the consummate servant of bad intent, and big budgets. Again, poor Africa, in fact poor anyone who has been victim of his contractual obligations. Fear filled rich folks who employ him for their dirty, despicable, atrocious, and illegal operations, fear him now, their Frankenstein. People think they can use the services of people like him, and not get dirty. That is his real expertise, is leaving his bosses with that shiny bright, clean, legal standing. Amazing how he accomplished this, low budget fighter planes for minor despots, that any worthy crop duster can fly. What a master stroke, taking warfare out of the hands of governments, and creating the corporate air force, the religious air force, the drug cartel air force. These planes are relatively cheap. Notice all the bluster that will probably fade as interest in the story fades, and the product is in the chute.
posted by Oyéah at 8:40 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


TD Strange is onto something. And what's terrifying is that for every Prince there are a hundred guys just like him doing the same things "legitimately"---except they work for governments.
posted by resurrexit at 8:44 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


(jesus I saw "Ginger Baker" and figured he'd popped his clogs, the blue has utterly ruined me this year for celebrity names in post titles)
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 8:50 PM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's a modified crop duster. A bunch of guys with a AKs could bring this thing down lickety-split.

This isn't a story about the evil Blackwater guy. This is a story about the fools that buy this thing from him.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:19 PM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


True enough. This isn't exactly something out of a Tom Clancy-branded video game.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:28 PM on April 12, 2016


The guy in the GWB cowboy hat did look a little foolish.
posted by valkane at 9:32 PM on April 12, 2016


I think the whole point of the modifications was to protect the plane from light arms like AKs. Heavier weapons are much harder to come by.
posted by Bee'sWing at 10:12 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Allusions to video games aren't so impressive when you realise that those video games are merely trying to deflect criticism from the U.S. (Or other) Government. Much like the mercenaries themselves.
posted by Yowser at 10:25 PM on April 12, 2016


I believe the appropriate solution is two FPPs down.

Maybe its the firmware, but our drones apparently don't work so well on white Christian Americans.

Still, I feel like there's something missing in the story, here. Prince is basically running guns for the Chinese at this point, along with "retired" members of our military. Our government doesn't seem to be working all that hard at hunting these people down and bringing them to justice.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:14 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wouldn't he be better off figuring out how to make a bunch of weaponized drones? Like, same airplane but remotely piloted... The pilot has to be the most expensive part of the package, why not rent out the pilots as well? The pilots could be anywhere, the planes... bleeeack spoooi ptaw yuck ugh, what a horrible, bleargh spit spit spit

and he can't be the only one, can he?
posted by From Bklyn at 12:26 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would watch the shit out of this on Netflix.
posted by colie at 12:49 AM on April 13, 2016


So an evil mercenary is working to convert crop-dusters into ground attack planes to bolster African war lords?

Where's that AirWolf reboot? We need Burgess Meredith at the control tower!
posted by LeRoienJaune at 1:22 AM on April 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Prince likes to brand himself as both a Christian and a patriotic American. I wonder if he believes himself to be any or both? The magnitude of his cognitive dissonance must be off the charts...
posted by Harald74 at 1:38 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also from Scahill and the Intercept: "ERIK PRINCE, founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case."
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:39 AM on April 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


I guess it makes a weird kind of sense; Africa is where all those super-sounds of the seventies mercs ended up. Guys like Mike Hoare, Bob Denard and Jean Schramme. Erik's probably got a dog-eared copy of The Dogs of War in his jumpbag and fancies himself as a kind of 21st Century Cat Shannon.
posted by valkane at 3:39 AM on April 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wouldn't he be better off figuring out how to make a bunch of weaponized drones? Like, same airplane but remotely piloted... The pilot has to be the most expensive part of the package

At this time I'm sure that wannabe fighter aces are more capable, plentiful, and cheaper than the cost of remote-control-equipping the planes. Plus you can't electronically jam a determined pilot.
posted by Artful Codger at 5:25 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Theme song for this thread

Wouldn't he be better off figuring out how to make a bunch of weaponized drones? Like, same airplane but remotely piloted... The pilot has to be the most expensive part of the package


I would not be at all surprised to hear that he is working on that too; just perhaps in a different location with a different group of investors
posted by TedW at 6:49 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


For all the self-dealing, shell corps, bum deals, over-promises and under-deliveries and, well, not quite double-crosses, but pocket lining with a wide array of dangerous folks, how has this guy not ended up with a bullet in his head and a shallow grave next to a dirt runway ?
posted by k5.user at 7:56 AM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Two reasons:

1 -- They think he'll be more useful to him in the future.

2 -- He's spent the last decade and a half in the presence of at least one armed person who is paid a lot of money to be ready to kill everyone in the room for any reason whatsoever.

I'm one of the presumably very small number of MeFites who have met Erik Prince. I can personally attest to that second one.
posted by Etrigan at 8:12 AM on April 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


Richard K Morgan wrote a book back in the early 2000's called Market Forces. In it, companies finance and staff the militaries of dictatorships in developing nations in return for a percentage of the GDP. This is way too scarily close to that.

(In the book, executives compete with each other in Deathrace 2000 style duels. If they can have the corporate sponsored military, why oh why can't they have these assholes killing each other on empty roads?)
posted by Hactar at 8:26 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I read about Erik Prince, I inevitably react like Chandler from Friends, "Could you BE any more of a James Bond villain?"
posted by jonp72 at 8:27 AM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


He needs to team up with Thatcher's son.
posted by srboisvert at 8:36 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Scahill's earlier book Blackwater was a fascinating introduction to Prince and his original, legendary PMC. Interesting to see the changes and developments in Mr Prince's story in the intervening 9 years.
posted by theorique at 9:25 AM on April 13, 2016


Etrigan, please tell us more.

As for Prince still being affiliated with the CIA, that was my first thought as well. However, we keep hearing about his exploits. He can't seem to keep his name out of the paper and that suggests to me that he is off the reservation, so to speak. As much as I hate the way the CIA operates, they are pretty talented at the covert angle.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 9:50 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Eh, not much to tell. I worked for a Blackwater competitor in Baghdad for a coupla years around the Surge. PSC people hung out in the same places; occasionally he'd barnstorm through and come to the bars social clubs that served no alcohol, no sir, we follow General Order #1 here you betcha even though our lawyers are arguing that it doesn't apply to us with his guys and either act like a Big Shot or try to blend in (neither one worked any of the times I was there). He wasn't the only bigwig who did this; he was the only one who always always always had a bodyguard* at his elbow.

* -- You know how to tell the difference between a bodyguard and an aide-de-camp? How much time they spend looking at the principal.
posted by Etrigan at 9:56 AM on April 13, 2016 [14 favorites]


Its weird, you'd think that US would shy away from nurturing characteristics from Apocalypse Now as a blueprint for their paramilitary contract security forces employed.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:59 AM on April 13, 2016


Wouldn't he be better off figuring out how to make a bunch of weaponized drones? Like, same airplane but remotely piloted... The pilot has to be the most expensive part of the package, why not rent out the pilots as well? The pilots could be anywhere, the planes... bleeeack spoooi ptaw yuck ugh, what a horrible, bleargh spit spit spit

They aren't, if you're not putting them through super rigorous american/first world airforce training programs i bet. It's pretty easy to buy a bunch of shitty computers, pirate some flight simulator software, and then give them a couple weeks of seat time. I doubt they're training to Top Gun levels here.

Honestly in this case i bet the actual high tech gear for drones would be the most expensive part. There's probably a shitload of planes laying around to turn in to basically flying technicals.

I'm honestly amazed that hasn't been a huge thing until now, and that this guy is "inventing" it.

And yea, honestly, the entire thing is depressing and disgusting but... also sort of inevitable.
posted by emptythought at 10:37 AM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


These planes are hardly 'inexpensive' for the capabilities they deliver. These aren't for air to air engagements, and for ground-attack and close air support your average despot would be better off with militarized helicopters, which is why that is already a thing that exists and has for a while.

For larger payloads or smarter ground attack standoff capabilities it'd be a lot easier to develop a ground-attack drone-bomb that you could just chuck out of the rear of a standard issue cargo plane (like a barrel bomb) and let it fly itself to a target, whether pre-programmed or ground-designated. A cheap, no-hardpoint JDAM, JSOW or Hellfire substitute, basically. I'd worry more about that, which I'd expect we'll see soon enough, than this.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:28 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


So an evil mercenary is working to convert crop-dusters into ground attack planes to bolster African war lords?

It's not even an original idea; Swedish mercs working for Biafra did the same back in the late sixties/early seventies.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:55 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


> I'm honestly amazed that hasn't been a huge thing until now, and that this guy is "inventing" it.

... "The Air Tractor crop duster was weaponized by the CIA for use in Colombia in the early 2000s."

A Bloomberg article. There appears to be a few companies who've been doing it for a while.
posted by porpoise at 1:05 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I read about Cessnas with rocket launchers in Lebanon, this month, maybe. But I think this the post-apocalypse air force. Yes. Utah boys, yes indeed.
posted by Oyéah at 8:08 PM on April 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


War is Boring: Does Erik Prince’s Private Air Force Even Make Sense?
posted by Harald74 at 1:13 PM on April 14, 2016




The most satisfying part of the article:
Two common threads emerge when examining many of Prince’s recent military proposals and offshore companies: He owns multiple parts of the supply chains for the deployment of private armed forces to foreign countries; and, since at least 2012, he has failed to implement them.
posted by clawsoon at 4:26 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


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