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The Special Air Service The Special Air Service is the United Kingdom's elite Special Forces Battalion (1), formed in 1941 it is a part of the United Kingdoms Special Forces Group (2) (UKSF) which consists of the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service (3) and the new Special Reconnaissance Regiment (4), as well as support units, the newly created Special Forces Support Group (5), UKSF signals and air units supplied by 8th Flight of the Army Air Corps. (6) The Special Air Service is made up of three regiments; the 21st, 22nd and 23rd regiments, the 21st and 23rd regiments are territorial (reserve) regiments made up of part-time soldiers sometimes known as the SAS(R) (7). The 22nd Special Air Service is the full time regiment, based at Credenhill in Hereford, England they are the main focus of this website. Members of the 22nd Special Air Service are selected from branches of the British Army; the exact numbers of the Battalion are not known but are believed to be around four-hundred including auxiliary staff (8). The regiment is split into different 'wings'; planning and intelligence, research, training, counter-revolutionary warfare (CRW) and 'Sabre' Squadrons. The Special Air Service is notorious for its counter-revolutionary warfare (CRW) wing (the guys in black) but it conducts a whole range of missions. The main function of them is intelligence gathering, often prior to conflicts they are helicopterd or parachuted behind enemy lines and gather intel on enemy locations, numbers and infrastructure. They also train friendly foreign troops and Special Forces, protect VIP's on body guarding duties and have been used to hunt war crime tyrants. (9) There have been criticisms over the way in which the Special Air Service have been used in recent years with them being dispatched on squadron sized assaults of priority targets in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq (10). This has been perceived by some as a misuse of specialist troops (who are rumoured to cost around £2.5million each to train) when regular infantry troops could have been used. This has lead to the creation of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and Special Forces Support Group, to support and take over some of the missions the Special Air Service may have previously been tasked to do and frees them up to undertake the missions they're trained to do. The misuse of them was particularly disappointing considering it is a mistake the military have made before, when the Special Air Service was first created during WWII it was, for a short while, renamed The Special Raiding Squadron, and used as an elite assault force until the military brass realised the mistake and re-instated them as the Special Air Service. (1)
http://www.armedforces.co.uk/army/listings/l0129.html
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