I don't know how things have changed over the past 25 years, but I used to work as a defense contractor and would frequently have to visit the Navy Annex in Virginia which was also HQ US Marine Corps.
It always struck me as weird that the guardhouse gate to enter was manned by a $12 hour off-brand security guard. I mentioned it to someone at one point, and I was told "Do you know how much it costs to train a Marine? It would be an outrageous waste of resources to staff that guardhouse with a Marine."
A relative who put in over 20 years in the army told me that a lot of their post gate guards were contractors these days. Considering that when he told me this it was the height of the occupation of Iraq ('05, maybe?), and that lots of the soldiers on these posts would soon be guarding gates and checkpoints in Iraq, it struck me as super fucking weird that they didn't use that as a training opportunity to get them experience doing that stateside—very different, sure, but any experience beats none, surely, and training's a ton of what they do when not deployed anyway, so seems like a win-win, but I guess either that's not true or whoever landed those contracts had some really good lobbyists.
It always struck me as weird that the guardhouse gate to enter was manned by a $12 hour off-brand security guard. I mentioned it to someone at one point, and I was told "Do you know how much it costs to train a Marine? It would be an outrageous waste of resources to staff that guardhouse with a Marine."
Go figure.