The day the SAS decided 'someone else could do it better'
By Sean Rayment
(Filed: 28/09/2003)

Britain's elite regiment was never intended for conventional warfare. And now there is pressure at the very highest level for it to return to its roots, writes Sean Rayment

It had been another hard-fought, but clear victory for the troops of the Special Air Service. More than a dozen enemy lay dead, their strongholds destroyed. As the smoke cleared, however, a realisation quickly emerged that this had not been the "special" type of operation for which the SAS had been created.

During the post-operation debrief the following day, one of the elite unit's squadron commanders turned to a colleague and made a surprising admission. "This was not one for us - the infantry could have done it better," he confessed. Twenty-two months later, the thinking behind that remark is about to lead to a major shake-up of the way the SAS operates.

It began in December 2001, a little over three months after the levelling of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The SAS's tactical headquarters inside Bagram Air Base, 25 miles north of Kabul in Afghanistan, had received orders to carry out an assault on an al-Qaeda training camp in the south of the country.

The plan was relatively straightforward: American war planes would provide air cover while 80 men from A and G squadrons of the SAS assaulted a series of enemy-held bunkers with the aim of capturing or killing senior members of the terrorist organisation.

The operation went well until the troops were forced to take on a bunker system further away from the point they had originally attacked. As they moved forward in a classic infantry formation, they were ambushed from the side and began taking casualties.

The most seriously injured was a young SAS trooper whose ankle was shattered by a bullet from an AK47 - later the lower half of his leg had to be amputated.

Three others suffered arm, chest and leg wounds caused by grenade fragments and bullets fired from AK47 assault rifles. One of the squadron commanders, a major who was later awarded the Military Cross for his part in the attack, escaped serious injury by a "hair's breadth": a bullet tore into his webbing and ripped off his water bottle while two others struck the ceramic breast-plate of his body armour.

The fighting was described as a "close quarter battle at its most intense". One SAS soldier who took part in it later recalled: "Targets were being engaged at a distance of 10 feet. It was a case of who had the steadiest hand won." More than a dozen enemy died in the attack; there were no SAS fatalities.

Despite its success, some of the SAS commanders were not happy. Their belief was that the regiment was being increasingly used in conventional operations for which they rarely trained and for which they were less suited than regular soldiers.

During the war in Afghanistan, the SAS took part in a number of operations that it is now generally accepted could have been carried out by infantry units who specialise in large scale attacks. The last time they had carried out such a battle had been 19 years earlier, at the Pebble Island raid during the Falklands War in 1982.

The regiment may not do so ever again, however. Earlier this year two significant appointments took place which will have a dramatic impact on the future role of the SAS.

A new commanding officer was appointed to the regiment and a new brigadier took over as the Director of Special Forces. Both men, it is understood, subscribe to the notion that the SAS should be allowed to return to its roots and concentrate on conducting "special" rather than "conventional" operations.

They, and others in the regiment's hierarchy, want to see the organisation used in the same way as Churchill used the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War. To achieve this they will form much stronger operational links with the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6.

The SOE was created on June 6, 1940. Its raison d'etre, according to Gen Hastings Ismay, one of its founding fathers, was to create a "proper system of espionage and intelligence along whole coasts, to harass the enemy from behind the lines".

The modern form of the SAS is regarded by many as an amalgam of the SOE, the Long Range Desert Group (which harassed the supply lines of Rommel's Afrika Corps in Libya and Egypt) and the wartime SAS.

Among other planned changes are an attempt to curb the power of the non-commissioned officers within the regiment. Although officers plan and co-ordinate operations, they rarely take part in the actual fighting - although this was not the case in some of the larger operations in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.

NCOs and soldiers are the only permanent members of the SAS. Officers serve terms of between two and three years before returning either to their original regiments or taking up staff jobs elsewhere in the Army.

The power and influence NCOs in the SAS are allowed to wield is unique within the armed services. Young officers are still referred to as "Ruperts", a term which has virtually disappeared in the rest of the Army but which some officers say is symptomatic of a form of snobbery which exists in the Regiment.

Young officers are often regarded, at least for the first half of their service, as a nuisance that has to be tolerated. Bizarrely, the NCOs prefer their "Ruperts" to have public school accents.

One Army officer said: "A new breed of officer is coming into the SAS who believe the powers of the NCOs need to be curbed. At the moment it is out of balance; a new equilibrium needs to be created."

NCOs are allowed a significant say in an officer's suitability for service in the regiment. Although the commanding officer has the casting vote, he rarely goes against a majority decision.

One officer said: "It has been known for perfectly good officers with strong regional accents to fail SAS selection because they are not regarded as proper officers. It's what is expected when you are briefing a government minister or a foreign head of state."

This claim has been strenuously denied by others who argue that the SAS is the epitome of a meritocracy and the attempt to curb the power of the NCOs will meet strong opposition. One former SAS officer said: "The NCOs are the SAS. Officers come and go but the NCOs provide the continuity."