The head of a prominent US private military company has proposed an unusual remedy for an overtaxed US military: raising a private force for service in places such as Iraq, Nathan Hodge reports from Washington.

Speaking last week at a symposium in Washington, Erik Prince, the CEO and founder of Blackwater USA, proposed raising a "contractor brigade" to supplement regular US military forces. "There's consternation in the DoD [Defence Department] about increasing the permanent size of the army," said Mr Prince. "We want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6bn to $4bn [€3.1bn, £2.2bn] to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier," he added. "We could do it certainly cheaper."