The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
British Commandos Demand Reform
by James Dunnigan
October 9, 2003
For several years, there has been something of a civil war going on inside Britain's SAS (Special Air Service) commando organization. There are several disputes over how the SAS should operate and how it should be run. For example, when the SAS went in to Afghanistan, they were prepared to operate in large groups for particularly difficult operations. There were at least three of these, each involving about a hundred SAS troopers. While these attacks were successful, some SAS members felt they would have been more useful operating in smaller groups, doing the traditional SAS jobs of reconnaissance, sabotage and information gathering raids. It was felt that Royal Marine Commandos could handle the larger scale combat. There has also been some feeling that the SBS (Special Boat Squadron), which has stuck with small scale operations, is the better for it. The SBS, formed from SAS members during World War II, is the British equivalent of the U.S. SEALS. Both SAS and SBS are small organizations. SAS has only about 200 "operators" (actual commandos), the SBS only about 120. The SBS has something of an advantage in that they recruit from the Royal Marine Commandos, who maintain a higher level of selection and training than the British army (from which the SAS recruits.)
There are also some SAS customs that some SAS officers would like to change. One in particular is the use of SAS NCOs to approve of officers wanting to join the SAS. Many officers want to keep this custom, but some do not.
The SAS are the original modern commandos. The SAS evolved out of the Long Range Desert Patrol (LRDP) that was created in North Africa during World War II to perform long range patrols in the desert. The LRDP was, in effect, the first modern LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) force. The LRDP served as something as a special operations laboratory, with several other commando type outfits forming from it (like Popski's Private Army, something of a super-LRRP outfit that later fought in Italy and led the way into Austria.) The SAS was disbanded after World War II, but brought back in the early 1950s as Britain saw the need for commandos as it fought communist guerillas in Malaysia. Since then, SAS and SBS has served all over the world, performing jobs that require a few good men (or women, which the SAS would like to recruit a few of). SAS has also performed undercover for MI-6 (the British version of the CIA.)
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