The British Army’s special forces, Special Air Service, was founded in 1941 and first started as regiment and later in 1950 was reconstituted as a corp. There are 22 Special Air Service Regiments in the corps and its main missions are covert reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, direct action and hostage rescue and intelligence gathering.
Formed by David Stirling on July of 1941, during World War 2, the unit was a under direct control of British Army. In November of 1941 the unit got its first mission to support the Operation Crusader offense with a parachute drop and unfortunately due to bad weather and German resistance the mission was a failure ending with the loss of 22 men getting captured or killed. However the second mission was success, destroying 60 aircrafts with minimum loss in airfields in Libiya, transport of Long Range Desert Group.
After the war the British government saw no further need of the unit and disbanded it on October of 1945. Soon after in 1947 the Artists Rifles took on the mantle of the SAS. Originally training for the Korean war, the unit was no longer needed and instead they volunteered in Malayan Emergency, which later SAS regiment was recognized and was added to the army list. Both Commonwealth and Non Commonwealth countries needed units similar to the SAS, thus each forming units modeled on British’s SAS.
The corps comprises of three units: one Regular (22nd Special Air Service Regiment) and two Army Reserve units (21st and 23rd SAS Regiments). 22nd SAS consists of 400-600 operatives of four squadrons, with 65 men each. The corps also has Special Air Service anti-hijacking counter-terrorism team, which is heavily trained in close quarter combat, sniping and hostage rescue techniques.
Usually the UK Special Forces never recruits from general public and that’s why most of the members have a commando or airborne forces skills, drafted from UK Armed Forces. The screening mostly consists of survival and endurance trainings across the UK and in other countries. The final selection test is Interrogation and Torture Resistance training, which lasts for 3 days. Both MI6 and MI5 train the operatives in counter-intelligence and counter-espionage.
‘’Who dares wins’’
brave men
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