Is the mercenary business on the brink of another boom?

Private military companies come in many different stripes.

- 

The mercenary, wrote Niccolo Machiavelli, was “useless and dangerous”.

He was “unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies”. A private soldier would turn and flee when trouble arrived. “They have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you.”

Yet, 500 years on, the business of private military companies (PMCs), to use the modern euphemism, is thriving.

Conflict brings misery, but also fuels demand. When the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was hired to distribute aid in Gaza earlier in 2025, it brought in UG Solutions, an American company, to help with armed security.

When Russia needed men for its war in Ukraine and for operations in Africa, it turned to the Wagner Group, a Kremlin-backed outfit staffed by former Russian special forces.

Colombian mercenaries are among those fighting for Ukraine. In the West, the American government is PMCs’ biggest customer, says Dr Dominick Donald, an analyst who once worked for Aegis, a British security firm.

The security business spans everything from pudgy rent-a-cops in shopping centres and armed guards hired by companies in dangerous places to soldiers of fortune who fight in wars.

Many are drawn from the same pool: former soldiers, often special forces. And all parts of the industry have expanded in recent decades, as governments have trimmed their armed forces and private demand has grown.

Now insiders are excited by a potential end to the war in Ukraine, hoping that reconstruction there will be as good for business as it was in Iraq.

The early 2000s were a “real boom”, says former British army officer Tim Spicer, who founded both Aegis and Sandline International, another PMC.

Iraq was home to tens of thousands of contractors, the vast majority in noncombat roles.