The best soldiers are getting back-up
The defence budget is shrinking, the cost of high-tech warfare soaring. How is Britain to remain a front-line military power? One answer, in a favourite phrase of warmongering tabloid newspapers, is to "send in the SAS"-the Special Air Service, perhaps the best of all elite regiments.
Over the past decade, British special-force (SF) fighters, comprising the SAS and their naval sister unit, the Special Boat Service (SBS), have been more busy in more places than at any time since the SAS was founded-to play merry heck behind German lines in 1941. First came peacemaking in the Balkans, then wars in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq, and counter-terrorism all over the place. The burden, which springs from America's war on terror and an interventionist British foreign policy, will not be lifted soon. And yet the combined strength of the SAS and SBS is only believed to be around 400 men.
Alas, their number cannot simply grow. Although a fourth SBS squadron is being raised from the toughest marine commandos, recruiting many more men would entail easing the entry requirements. Better to train and dedicate high-grade infantrymen to support SF operations, freeing the best soldiers for the most demanding tasks. Hence the Joint Special Forces Support Group (JSFSG), an outfit modelled on America's army rangers, and whose first members, from the parachute regiment, are enjoying a preliminary outing with the SAS in Baghdad.
One of several army reforms announced in December, the JSFSG will become partially operational next April and ready by 2008. At its heart will be the Parachute Regiment's 1st battalion, which will be cut to 476 soldiers-in effect, losing a company of 70 men. It will also have a company of marine commandos and a similar number of experts from the air force, including forward air-controllers. The support group is to be led by the paras' commanding officer and dedicated to its new role; the battalion has already been removed from the infantry order of battle.
The army is cockahoop. Before the recent shake-up, it faced losing four infantry battalions. Thanks to its canny boss, the JSFSG's architect, General Sir Mike Jackson, it has, in effect, lost only three. That the general himself commanded "1 para" suggests a spot of backroom manoeuvring; he describes the group's formation as "a very good result for the army".
The SAS and SBS are also pleased. Already the most pampered of British fighters, they can expect dedicated back-up in three main areas. First, as conventional support: the group might, say, secure a fuel supply for forward SF troops. Second, as an auxiliary strike force for SF operations; the paras have already performed this task in Sierra Leone in 2000, when they eradicated a vicious militia called the West Side Boys (led by Commanders Mega-Rapist and Slaughter, among others), after SAS troopers had sprung 11 British hostages from the militia camp. Third, the support group can train the special forces of allies. As these, often from oil-rich Middle-Eastern countries, are typically none too special, the paras are easily up to the job.
The Parachute Regiment, which has always thought itself a cut above the general infantry, is also pleased. Para recruits will now enter the regiment's 2nd and 3rd battalions for a year or two, before being encouraged to apply for the JSFSG; members of other infantry battalions will also be able to apply. After a similar spell in the support group, most will return to their units. But the best may seek to join the SF. Having learnt SF drills in the support group, they will have done no harm to their chances. Around 175 soldiers brave each of the SAS's twice-yearly six-month selection courses and around 30 are accepted-almost half of whom are paras.
Members of the JSFSG are technically part of the ordinary armed forces. Not so the directorate's other recent addition, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), the first new SF unit in half a century, and the only one open to women. The regiment existed in prototype as 14th intelligence company, a plainclothes surveillance unit in Northern Ireland. As military operations scale down there, the new SRR will safeguard its skills.
