The main deeds of Blackwater International Security Company in the United States.

In fact, in addition to Baidu Encyclopedia, there are many public materials on the Internet.

The main founders of Blackwater Company are eric prince, a retired SEAL from the right-wing rich family, and his predecessor, El Clark, who served in SEAL Team 8. Compared with MPRI, Deyang International and Tiejia Group, Blackwater Company is only a small and medium-sized enterprise.

1997, Prince bought about 24 square kilometers of marshland in Kirktak County, North Carolina, and built a training ground including training facilities and accommodation facilities. The training ground opened in May of 1998. This training company is called Blackwater, which refers to the color of the local swamp. Shortly after its establishment, the company began to contract the training of naval special forces, and also provided on-the-job training services for the FBI and police agencies all over the country. However, since the training ground was originally a wild reserve, there have been environmental protection organizations and anti-war organizations opposing the existence of the training ground since the establishment of Blackwater Company. Therefore, Blackwater Company has repeatedly stressed that it will not conduct blasting training and use tracer bullets in the training ground. During the California mountain fire from June 5438 to October 2007, Blackwater Company sheltered more than 300 nearby residents in the training company to improve the public image.

1999 After the shooting at Columbine Middle School in Colorado, Blackwater Company immediately launched training for the campus gunfight environment, and trained 1000 police officers. As a result, the police departments all over the country know the name of Blackwater Training Company. In 2000, the company's business began to expand rapidly, but at this time the two founders parted ways. Clark, who is in charge of training, and Prince, who is in charge of business direction, have differences in business philosophy. Clark also set up his own training company after resigning.

Blackwater's training ground

Several of the shooting ranges

The casual bodyguard standing between a friend in a suit and a military uniform is a contractor of Blackwater Company. This friend in a suit was Lord paul bremer, the first colonial governor of the United States in Iraq, and his life safety in Iraq was contracted to BSC.

Because Blackwater Company contracted the security work of several allied headquarters in Iraq, when the allied headquarters were attacked by anti-American armed forces, the temporary workers of Blackwater Company had to fight back with the soldiers at the headquarters. Photos like this are the fighting on the Allied headquarters building in Najaf in 2004. Such a situation is usually regarded by those who oppose PMC as "criminal evidence" of "American soldiers fighting side by side with mercenaries"

Prince founded Blackwater Security Consulting Company (BSC) on 200 1. The contractor of Blackwater Company is from BSC.

There are two types of security contractor enterprises: PSC and PMC.

Private security companies provide armed and unarmed security services. PMC is the abbreviation of two words, one is a private military company and the other is a private military contractor. The former refers to enterprises, and the latter can refer to both enterprises and individual employees in these enterprises.

The services provided by PMC include national defense, military training and security. Therefore, PMC not only has security business on the table, but also may have military actions that are not exposed. Some employees in PMC may provide security protection for UN food relief agencies, the Red Cross or other similar international relief organizations in areas where the war has just subsided. However, some of its employees may secretly serve as military instructors, strategic consultants, tactical guidance, battlefield command, and even directly participate in the fighting of an armed gang in another war-torn area. Because American PMC companies do go to places where the Pentagon is inconvenient or unwilling to appear in order for the US government to complete the task of exporting American military and diplomatic influence to the world, some American PMC companies are indeed secret forces of the US government to a certain extent.

After the U.S.-British Coalition forces overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime, some people found it easier to do things because of the close relationship between Blackwater's top management and the right-wingers in the U.S. government and Congress-Blackwater successfully won Paul Bremer's security task without bidding, and there were other small projects, but at this time, the company's security business was not much. Then the Fallujah incident happened in 2004, which was unfortunate for the four security contractors who were flogged. However, it was this incident that created the well-known Blackwater Company. Since then, Blackwater's security contracts have been rolling in, enabling the company to expand rapidly and enter the ranks of well-known PMC. Besides security contracts, Blackwater is said to have secret military contracts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.

Even with the rapid expansion, in fact, Blackwater's industry position, turnover and company scale are far behind the above-mentioned large enterprises. However, unlike its low-key peers, Blackwater frequently appears in front of public media. Although most of these news are negative, such as the ambush in Fallujah and the shooting of civilians. Just like advertisements such as melatonin, even the worst things will be impressive if you listen to them too much. Perhaps it is for these reasons that there is hardly a military fan in China who doesn't know the name "Blackwater".

In fact, blackwater has some grievances. Blackwater isn't the only security contractor who shot civilians. For example, on June 65438+1October 65438+1October 0 1 in 2007, Deyang Group escorted the State Council and killed a taxi driver in Baghdad. However, Blackwater is too ostentatious, so almost all the media cameras are focused on them, and some media even go undercover to dig up news materials of this company. For example, after Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater sent 250 contractors into New Orleans, mainly responsible for guarding enterprises, banks, hotels, factories and residential areas for the rich. Although Blackwater claims that one of its helicopters has saved 128 people affected by the disaster, some people accuse New Orleans of having enough National Guard and local police, and the local people need food, drinking water and medicine more than armed guards. Although Heishui was not the only PMC involved in disaster relief in New Orleans at that time, it became a typical representative again and was criticized by the media because it was too conspicuous.

The blackwater contractor patrolling the streets of New Orleans is, uh, a temporary worker.

Negative news about Blackwater also includes false job advertisements and non-performance of contracts. For example, a contractor of Colombian Blackwater Company (they should be called "temporary workers" or "migrant workers") complained that their monthly salary was heard to be $4,000 at the time of recruitment, but it dropped to $2,700 after being hired, and then dropped to about $65,438+$0,000 after flying to Iraq. And if it is a special force retired from the United States, the price will be much higher. For example, Scott Gerwen, a retired Navy SEAL who died in the Fallujah attack, was initially paid $60,000 for two months. However, his death is believed to be due to Blackwater's failure to give enough support in the task in order to save money. For example, the contract originally stipulated that armored vehicles should be provided, and each vehicle should have at least three people. However, on the day of the accident, only four contractors were divided into two ordinary vehicles without armor. However, this task was originally easy, but because they got lost and turned into the anti-American armed control area, they were ambushed without armor to provide protection and there were no machine guns in the car. Only one person in each car can fight back with a carbine, and the whole army was wiped out under the siege of AK, PK and RPG.

Scott Helvens, who was flogged in Fallujah, participated in the reality show Combat Mission.

Due to the constant negative news, in order to change the company image, Blackwater Company changed its name from Blackwater USA to Blackwater Global in June 5438 +20071October, and changed its company logo. However, the bear claw image of Blackwater logo is deeply rooted in people's hearts, so the role of renaming logo is not great. So in February 2009, the company changed its name to "Xe" again, and announced that it would "no longer actively seek new private security contracts" and shifted its business focus to training and logistics. On March 2, Prince also announced his resignation as CEO of the company and continued to serve as chairman of the board of directors, but he no longer participated in daily business.

The early symbol of Blackwater Company

In the new LOGO in 2007, the crosshair should be a "less aggressive" lever, and the word "black water" was cancelled.

The new logo came into use in February 2009.

Official website's LOGO has also changed.

All the above information comes from D boy's Netease blog, which contains many very professional blog posts. You can have a look if you are interested.