Mercenaries the future of warfare?

[Jobu88]

Apples and oranges, mates.

We use contractors for a gizzilion things in the US military and government. Clerical, IT systems, intelligence analysts, weapons development. What we don't do is hire soldiers.

A contractor who is hired to be the Iranian naval forces expert in an intel center in Tampa, Florida is not the same as hiring someone to go patrol Ramadi and kill any bad guys he can find.

Nor, frankly, are the various modern security services like Blackwater "mercenaries" in the sense of being hired soldiers. They are ( or are at least supposed to be) hired for very specific, narrrowly-defined jobs that at most are security-related.