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[MADem]

259. It costs upwards of twenty thousand dollars to get an E-1 to his or her first duty station.

Often much more if there's specialized training following initial entry training.

It costs the price of an ad, or a phone call to contract a security firm, and a couple of fingerprint/background checks, a few days of training and supervision, to get a civilian guard standing duty at a gate.

MUCH cheaper than twenty grand plus before you even see the body on the base.

That's why they don't put "tooth" in "tail" jobs when there's a war going on. In peacetime, those positions can be used to train security forces in observation techniques, installation access limitation, setting security zones and perimeters, and doing things like vehicle and package searches (as well as supervising a cadre of both civilian and military personnel) but when forces are shorthanded they aren't going to recruit extra military end strength to do a job that a civilian, who can be hired and later fired, can do.

It's all about the bottom line.