Carlyle has benefited enormously from the war, thanks to sales of robotics systems, defense communications systems, and a major Iraq contract to train police awarded to its holding, USIS. The $56 billion company has a defense-oriented equity firm that specializes in collecting defense contractors and taking them public, a very profitable enterprise in recent years. “It’s the best 18 months we ever had,” said Carlyle’s chief investment officer, Bill Conway, referring to the first eighteen months of the war in Iraq.
