The US is hiring military contractors for operations in Syria
David Furst/Pool/Getty ImagesA US Marine takes a retinal scan of a local Fallujah resident.
In an obscure yet publicly available report, the Pentagon has for the first time indicated that it was hiring military contractors for operations in Syria.
In an investigation from The Daily Beast, the nearly 300 US troops already present in Syria would be receiving "intelligence analysis services" from Six3 Intelligence Solutions Inc., a privately held defense contractor based out of McLean, Virginia. This $10 million contract would place an unknown number of contractors in various countries, including Syria.
According to The Daily Beast, neither the Pentagon nor Six3 Intelligence Solutions would elaborate further on the type of services or other relevant information on the subject.
Details on Six3 Intelligence Solutions also remain scant; however, Georgetown University professor and former contractor Sean McFate provides some insight.
"This is no ordinary contractor… Six3 Intelligence Solutions is a private intelligence company, and the fact that we outsource a good portion of our intelligence analysis creates a strategic dependency on the private sector to perform vital wartime operations," McFate explained to The Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast also managed to glean a statement from an archived version of Six3 Intelligence Solutions' website: "Our expertise ranges from finger, palm, face, and iris examinations to exploitation and forensic analysis."
This assortment of biometrics and identity services offered by the contractor essentially analyzes individual human characteristics to figure out who each person is. In addition to the forensic analysis, however, the contractor also claims to provide counterintelligence and reconnaissance services as well.
The contract award comes at the heels of the additional 250 special forces troops that were ordered to deploy to Syria, in order to "advise and assist" the local forces that the US hopes will be fighting ISIS militants.