These Are the World’s Top Armies-For-Hire

Professional warriors, employed by governments and wealthy entities as private soldiers, have existed in practically every society across every race and culture since the dawn of civilization. 21st century mercenaries require a wide range of skill sets in expert use of state-of-the-art technologies in many fields, making them highly in demand once they enter civilian life. Apart from actual warfare, personal and premises security, crowd control, surveillance, removal of landmines, and other explosive devices, training private and other governmental teams, make up the bulk of modern day requirements for teams with army-for-hire skills. 

• Private Military Companies (PMCs) are the modern day version of mercenaries, or soldiers for hire. 
• Since the dawn of civilization, professional warriors have emerged in every race, culture, and society, and on every continent. 
• While they will often be hired for their expertise in lethal operations, PMCs are often hired for private security, extractions of domestic and international kidnapping victims taken for private ransoms for which conventional law enforcement might be too inexperienced or undermanned, and for training of conscripted troops in modern warfare strategies, techniques, and technologies. 
• They are still present around the world.

• Contemporary PMCs need to be expert in cutting edge communications, weaponry, transportation, strategies, tactics, information technology, spycraft, and a host of other skill sets required for effective security protocols and waging warfare, if called upon.
• Such skill sets are in high demand in numerous other occupations in modern society and many former professional soldiers are able to get high paying technical jobs after retirement. 
• The following PMCs are currently some of the largest or most recognized entities in operation:

• In August 2023, Wagner Group founders Yevgeny Progozhin and Dmitry Utkin died in a plane crash. 
• As Russia’s largest and most famous (or infamous) private PMC, Wagner Group’s presence as both a security force protecting international Russian interests and as the point of the spear for defending ethnic Russians from Ukrainian attacks in Crimea and Donbas, which presaged the current Ukrainian War have led to its comparisons to US PMC Blackwater. 
• Progozhin’s son, Pavel, took over leadership of Wagner Group several months after his father’s plane crash death.
• According to US estimates, Wagner Group suffered 30,000 casualties in Ukraine, and Progozhin blamed 20,000 Wagner deaths on mismanaged strategies and poor execution on the part of Russian military leadership. 

• President Vladimir Putin confirmed that the Kremlin is the primary bankroller of Wagner Group, with almost the equivalent of US$1 billion supplied between May, 2022 and May, 2023. 
• Wagner Group has also received sizable fees from governments in Mali, Ghana, CAR, Venezuela, Mozambique, and other nations. 
• Some of the compensation has come in the form of previous stones or other commodities, making it difficult to get a confirmed accounting. 
• Although Wagner Group’s ranks numbered as high as 85,000 in 2023, current estimates only number 5,000. 

• Founded by ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, Blackwater was founded in 1997. 
• Its notorious reputation is based primarily on human rights violations committed during the Iraq War, ostensibly at the direction of the CIA. 
• Nevertheless, Blackwater’s efficient and successful operations in securing government facilities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, protecting personnel and facilities in the energy, insurance and communications industries, and in training militaries of other nations was and is still highly regarded in international circles. 

• The lucrative potential of Blackwater’s services outweighed its reputational baggage, and the company underwent several name and ownership changes, acquiring rivals and consolidating a larger global operational base along the way. 
• Presently owned by private equity goliath Apollo Global Management, under the Constellis brand, the company now counts former rivals Triple Canopy, Strategic Social. Olive Group, Tidewater Global Services, International Development Services, National Strategic Protective Services, Academi, and Constellis Ltd. brands all under the Constellis Group umbrella. 
• Constellis still has over $1 billion in active contracts with the US government. Its 22,000 employees operate in 40 different countries. 

• In terms of personnel and financial size, London, UK headquartered G4S is the 800-lb. Gorilla of the security sector. 
• With over 533,000 employees GS4 is now owned by Allied Universal, which boasts annual revenues of $20 billion.
• Prior to leaving its public listings on the London and Copenhagen Stock Exchanges to go private  in 2021, G4S was cited as the largest single private sector employer in Europe and Africa. 

• Although its military contracting has been limited to providing security for military bases and in removal of landmines and other explosives for the United Nations, G4S has become one of the premier premises and private personal security contractors in the world. 
• Its size has grown due to acquisition of competitors and in providing security services for major outdoor sporting events and festivals, as well as for corporate buildings, factories, prisons, airports, and other sites around the globe. 
• G4S’ reputation received some damage due to gaps in its 2012 Olympics security services, which required the assistance of British military troops, and the 2016 Orlando, FL mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub by Omar Mateen, a former G4S employee. 

• A private security company which keeps its corporate details highly confidential, Erinys was founded by retired British military officer Jonathan Garrett, registered in the British Virgin Islands, and is headquartered out of Dubai. 
• Originally created to supply protection services for pipelines and executive personnel and for training domestic protection teams in Iraq, Erinys has expanded its operations.
• The company presently has additional offices in the UK, South Africa, and subsidiaries in Iraq, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and in Republic of Congo. 
• In addition to security services, Erinys also provides logistics, communications, and project risk evaluation services, specializing in Africa. Personnel and financial details are kept confidential and undisclosed to the public. 

• From 1980 to 2000, Peru found itself in a struggle against Tupac Amaru and Shining Path, two Marxist-Leninist armed revolutionary insurgency groups. 
• Both groups launched multiple attacks on civilians, government, and military personnel. Dozens of human rights atrocities were documented, and it wasn’t until President Fujimori managed to capture Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman that the government began to prevail. 
• Defion Internacional was formed in the aftermath of these two decades of turmoil and national instability. 

• Based in Lima, Defion Internacional is a PMC specializing in recruiting, training, and vetting security personnel for Peru, as well as for Philippines, Sri Lanka, Dubai, and Iraq, as well as for the US State Department.
• Defion was a major subcontractor for Triple Canopy before the latter was acquired by Constellis. 
• Additional services of Defion include: food and medicine services, English translations, personal body guarding, and logistic support. Details regarding personnel and finances are unavailable. 

• As with many companies in China, the demarcation line between private and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ownership is a blurry grey smear. 
• Frontier Services Group (FSG) was originally founded by Blackwater’s Erik Prince, to protect burgeoning Chinese investment interests in Africa. 
• However, China’s state-owned CITIC Bank is FSG’s largest shareholder, and the company is headquartered in Hong Kong, although business is overseen from Beijing. Additional FSG branches operate from Shanghai, Kunming, Dubai, Malta, Nairobi, and Cape Town. 

• Although FSG officially provides logistics and high risk assessment analytics for Chinese businesses in Africa, they explicitly state that they do not provide any armed personnel services. 
• Adding to its “grey area”, they contradictorily offer “anti-terrorist security training” and provided key support for China’s One Belt, One Road initiative with its paramilitary work for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Yunnan and Xinjiang. 
• These activities included enforcement of Uighur internment camps and rebellion suppression, earning it a place on the sanctioned entities list  from the US Commerce Department. 
• Officially, FSG has between 2,100 and 2,300 employees and $96.9 million 2024 revenues - however, like other CCP “official” numbers, they are not considered to be reliable.