Scope of the Database
PMCDB covers private military companies, private security companies, defense-service providers, defense-industrial companies, and government contractors operating in defense-related sectors.
Inclusion in PMCDB does not imply that a company is a “mercenary organization,” unlawful actor, or private military company unless specifically supported by evidence.
Actor Classification Framework
Classification follows the activity evidenced in the record, not a generic defense-sector label. Different activities remain analytically distinct.
Private Military Company
A private company that provides military-related operational services such as armed support, combat support, training, operational planning, or other functions closely connected to military activity.
Private Security Company
A private company primarily providing protective security, guarding, convoy protection, facility security, risk management, or related security services.
Defense-Service Provider
A company providing technical, logistical, maintenance, training, intelligence-support, communications, engineering, or other services to defense institutions without primarily manufacturing weapons or conducting armed operations.
Defense-Industrial Company
A company primarily engaged in the design, manufacture, integration, maintenance, or sale of defense-related equipment, systems, weapons, platforms, or technologies.
Multi-Category Actor
A company may be classified in more than one category where the available evidence supports more than one material line of activity.
Inclusion Criteria
An entity is included when at least one of the following is documented:
- Defense or security contracting with governments
- Military or security services
- Defense-industrial production
- Overseas defense or security operations
- Government procurement or contracting activity
- Publicly documented activity relevant to private defense regulation
Entities are not included solely on the basis of media speculation.
Source Hierarchy
Primary sources should be used wherever available for legal and regulatory claims.
Primary Sources
- Legislation
- Regulations
- Government procurement records
- Court records
- Official sanctions lists
- Company filings
- Government agency publications
- Parliamentary records
High-Quality Secondary
- Major international organizations
- Academic publications
- Established think tanks
- Reputable investigative journalism
- Industry reports
Supporting Sources
- Company websites
- Trade publications
- Reputable news reporting
Confidence Levels
Confidence describes the strength and completeness of evidence for an individual claim. It is not a judgment about the actor itself.
Directly supported by authoritative primary-source evidence.
Supported by multiple reliable sources, including at least one highly authoritative source.
Supported by credible reporting or secondary evidence but lacking complete primary-source verification.
Evidence exists but is incomplete, dated, disputed, or difficult to verify independently.
Evidence is insufficient; the factual claim is not presented as established.
Partially Verified is a record-level research status used for source records and country frameworks. It means some, but not all, of the qualifying evidence has been recorded. Needs Review means a source is linked but has not yet been assessed. Separately, a framework’s source metadata status describes whether per-claim source records have been structured; it does not change the research status.
Regulatory exposure (Low, Moderate, Elevated, High) on company profiles is a deterministic count of the regulatory considerations recorded for each company, with extra weight for armed-personnel accountability, use-of-force oversight, sanctions, criminal misuse and human-rights compliance. It indicates which regulatory tools are relevant to the company’s activities. It is not a risk rating, legal advice, or an allegation of wrongdoing.
Evidence classes are kept separate: Verified Research is manually researched profile material; Recent Intelligence and Developments are automatically collected public-source items and are not treated as verified; U.S. Contracts are automatically synchronized official USAspending records and are not company revenue.
Last Verified
A “Last Verified” field is shown for country regulatory profiles, company profiles, major legal claims, and source records when a stored review date exists. PMCDB uses only recorded dates and does not infer or invent review dates.
If no review date is stored, PMCDB displays “Insufficient Verified Information” or indicates that a date is not recorded.
Legal Status Labels
Legal-status labels summarize the position supported by the cited evidence. They apply to a particular activity and actor type, not automatically to an entire jurisdiction or company.
Every assigned label must be tied to supporting evidence. Where evidence is incomplete, the platform uses “Unclear” or “Insufficient Verified Information” rather than inference.
Country Research Method
For each jurisdiction, research seeks to identify the following elements without collapsing legally distinct actor types:
- Governing legislation
- Licensing authorities
- Export-control rules
- Security-service regulation
- Defense procurement rules
- Criminal restrictions
- Overseas activity rules
- Use-of-force rules
- Weapons authorization
- Enforcement mechanisms
- Reporting requirements
- Relevant international obligations
Company Research Method
For each company, PMCDB records the following fields where reliable information is available:
- Headquarters
- Ownership
- Actor category
- Services
- Jurisdictions of operation
- Government clients
- Relevant contracts
- Regulatory exposure
- Sanctions or legal actions
- Public controversies
- Primary sources
- Confidence level
- Last verified date
Event Geography
PMCDB keeps five geographic concepts separate: company headquarters, documented company operations (from researched profiles), event market or location, counterparty / customer country, and regulatory jurisdiction. A company's headquarters never sets the location of an event.
Event geography is derived with fixed, deterministic text rules from the event headline, summary and extracted counterparty — for example “factory in Ukraine”, “Polish Army”, “Taiwan orders” or a named national agency such as the Bundeswehr. High confidence means the location or national customer is stated explicitly; Moderate means a single country or national agency is named without an explicit location phrase. Broad wording such as “European expansion”, “NATO customer” or “allied nations” sets no country. Where signals point to different countries, the event is flagged for review and left without a market. Where evidence is insufficient, geography is left unknown. Many events therefore carry no market, and market activity counts are not complete.
Market pages count only events with accepted high- or moderate-confidence geography. A researched regulatory profile does not imply that events occurred in that country, and an event in a country does not imply PMCDB has researched its regulation. Official U.S. contract records are not used to infer foreign-market geography.
Opportunity Intelligence
Opportunity signals are derived deterministically from sourced structured events and official USAspending contract awards. Each signal references its underlying evidence and links to it.
Event signals are created only for events with accepted geography (auto-accepted or manually reviewed, high or moderate confidence), that are not merged duplicates or pending duplicate review, and whose type indicates procurement, government demand, market entry, facilities, partnerships, investment, M&A movement, or product/program activity with an identifiable customer or program. Confidence is High when geography is high-confidence and a customer or program is identified; otherwise Moderate. No low-confidence signals are generated.
Award signals are official U.S. contract awards whose original award date is within the last 12 months and whose Current / Lifetime Award Value is at least $10M. They are historical awarded contracts — not open tenders, open opportunities or available contracts — and lifetime value is not company revenue.
Signals indicate observable activity worth investigating. PMCDB does not currently score or rank market attractiveness or opportunities, and the "why this matters" line is generated only from structured fields. Users should inspect the underlying evidence before relying on any signal.
Signed-in users can receive in-product alerts. Alerts are derived only from intelligence newly collected after monitoring was turned on, matched against companies the user follows (with alerts on) or saved searches the user monitors, using the same matching as Global Search. One underlying development produces at most one alert per user. Alerts are delivered in-product; individual alerts are not sent by email. Optional daily or weekly email digests, off until a user turns them on, summarize monitored changes for the companies, searches and Monitoring Sets that user follows or monitors.
Procurement Intelligence
Open Procurement currently uses two official sources: EU TED (Tenders Electronic Daily), the official EU procurement journal, and SAM.gov Contract Opportunities, the official U.S. federal opportunities system. TED notices are shown only when classified as defence-relevant by fixed, deterministic rules (defence buyers, military CPV codes and defence terms, with civilian exclusions). SAM.gov notices are limited to U.S. Department of Defense organizations (Army, Navy, Air Force, DLA, DARPA, MDA and other components). Each source's notice types and statuses are normalized into PMCDB's canonical statuses (Open, Pre-solicitation, Market research, Notice only, Closed, Cancelled, Award). No AI is used. PMCDB does not claim complete coverage of U.S. or European defence procurement.
A notice is Open only when it is an active tender with at least one future response deadline. For multi-lot tenders it stays open until the last lot deadline passes. Award notices, closed notices, prior-information and market-research notices are never counted as open opportunities. When TED publishes a replacement, only the current version appears in listings and search; earlier versions remain available for provenance.
Official titles are shown as published, without machine translation. Procurement data may be incomplete: many notices do not state an estimated value. PMCDB does not score, rank or recommend procurement notices.
PMCDB categories (for example Unmanned & Autonomous Systems or Parts / Components) are normalized classification labels assigned by fixed rules: SAM.gov notices by their official PSC code, TED notices by their CPV codes, with clear English terms in the title or TED English label adding categories where codes are general. A notice may have several categories; notices without sufficient evidence are labelled Other Defense Procurement. The scope filter is derived only from these categories (any Parts / Components → Parts; otherwise any systems category → Systems / Programs; otherwise Services / Support). SAM.gov DoD components are taken from the official department / sub-agency path, never from title wording. These labels are PMCDB's, not fields published by TED or SAM.gov.
Limitations
- Private defense-sector activity can be opaque.
- Company structures and subsidiaries can change.
- Governments may not publish complete contracting data.
- Legal frameworks may be fragmented across multiple statutes and agencies.
- Absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of activity.
- PMCDB should not be treated as legal advice.
Independence Statement
PMCDB is an independent defense-intelligence platform created and maintained by Dmitry Bilous. The platform is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any government agency, military organization, defense company, or private security firm.