In the past decade, Special Operations Forces have attracted much public attention, and, in the United States, a significant academic literature has developed about them. By contrast, few scholars have analyzed 22 Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), Britain's prime Special Operations Forces unit. This is unfortunate. From a peripheral position during the cold war, the SAS has attained a central position in British defense posture. This article analyzes the rise of the SAS as an example of organizational transformation in the armed forces today. The SAS's new prominence may also illustrate the contemporary dynamics of military change more widely.
Special (Operations) Forces are highly selected and trained soldiers who specialize in reconnaissance and deep raids.
2.
Tony Geraghty, Who Dares Wins (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1980).
3.
Erwin Rommel, The Rommel Papers (London: Arrow Books, 1984), 393.
4.
Geraghty, Who Dares Wins, 216.
5.
Mark Urban, Big Boys Rules (London: Faber and Faber, 2001).
6.
Ministry of Defence, The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter, cm 5566, vol. 1 (London: Ministry of Defence, 2002), 6.4.
7.
For example, Rune Henriksen, "Warriors in Combat-What Makes People Actively Fight in Combat," Journal of Strategic Studies 30, 2 (2007): 187-223; T. Adams, US Special Operations Forces in Action (London: Frank Cass, 1998); Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defence Policy (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002).
8.
Warren Chin, "Operation Enduring Freedom: A Victory for a Conventional Force Fighting an Unconventional War," in Grand Strategy in the War on Terrorism, ed. T. Mockaitis and P. Rich (London: Frank Case, 2003).
9.
John Newswinger, Dangerous Men: The SAS and Popular Culture (London : Pluto, 1997).
10.
Christopher Dandeker, "Building Flexible Forces for the 21st Century: Key Challenges for the Contemporary Armed Forces," in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, ed. G. Caforio (London: Kluwer/Plenum, 2003); Christopher Dandeker, "A Farewell to Arms? The Military and the Nation-State in a Changing World," in The Adaptive Military, ed. J. Burk (London: Transaction, 1998); Christopher Dandeker, "New Times for the Military," British Journal of Sociology 45, 4 (1994): 637-54; Christopher Dandeker and Fiona Paton, The Military and Social Change (London: Brasseys 1997).
11.
Peter Ratcliffe, Eye of the Storm (London: Michael O'Mara, 2001), 433.
12.
Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero (London: Corgi, 1994); Chris Ryan, The One That Got Away ( London: Century, 1995).
13.
Michael Asher, The Real Bravo Two Zero (London: Cassell2003); also see Ratcliffe, Eye of the Storm, 429.
14.
Ibid., 429
15.
Ibid., 427.
16.
This article is part of a wider research project on the transformation of Europe's armed forces that has involved ethnographic observation of British forces in training and on operations and interviews with military personnel. Five Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) officers and two Special Boat Service (SBS) officers were interviewed as part of this research, though, for evident reasons of security, the Special Operations Forces' missions were not explicitly discussed.
17.
Henriksen, "Warriors in Combat," 214.
18.
See Anthony King, "The Post-Fordist Military,"Journal of Political and Military Sociology34, 2 (2006): 359-74.
19.
Urban, Big Boys Rules.
20.
Ken Connor , Ghost Force (London: Cassell, 1989), 399.
21.
Ibid., 399-401.
22.
General Sir Peter de la Billiere, Storm Command ( London: Harper Collins1995),18.
23.
Ibid., 191.
24.
Newswinger, Dangerous Men, 16.
25.
Ibid., 16.
26.
Ibid., 18-19, 21
27.
Ratcliffe, Eye of the Storm, 156-57, 172-74; Connor, Ghost Force, 377, 396.
28.
Connor, Ghost Force, 399.
29.
Ibid., 399.
30.
Newswinger, Dangerous Men, 31.
31.
Ratcliffe, Eye of the Storm, 373-74.
32.
While there was a reduction of Scud launches after the SAS's deployment from forty-three in the first ten days to forty-two in the next thirty, the impact of the SAS is unclear. The reduction in launches was as great in the south, where no SAS patrols were operating. Indeed, Ratcliffe records watching a Scud convoy passing his patrol unmolested; this particular Scud detachment does not seem to have been deterred by the presence of the SAS. It is interesting that de la Billiere records General Schwarzkopf's high praise of the SAS after the conflict in a letter to Air Chief Marshal Paddy Hine, the Joint Commander. However, while the letter claimed that the SAS had succeeded "in totally denying the central corridor of western Iraq to Scud units," in Schwarzkopf's autobiography, his 8-line discussion of Special Forces operations against Scuds records only the difficulty posed by the weather conditions, enemy forces, and the mobility of Scud launchers in countering them from the air. de la Billiere, Storm Command, 268; Schwarzkopf, It Doesn't Take a Hero (New York: Bantam, 1992, 418-19).
33.
Many studies have demonstrated the importance of political sponsorship to institutional transformation in the armed forces. See Charles Ackley, The Modern Military in American Society (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974); and Thomas Hone and Sanford Terry, Managing Command and Control in the Persian Gulf War (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996).
34.
Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar, Laboratory Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
35.
Michel Martin, "Conscription and the Decline of the Mass Army in France, 1960-75," Armed Forces & Society 3, 3 (1977): 355-406; C. Kelleher, "Mass Armies in the 1970s: The Debate in Western Europe," Armed Forces & Society 5, 1 (1978): 3-30; Philippe Manigart, "Restructuring of the Armed Forces," in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, ed. Giuseppe Caforio (London: Kluwer/Plenum, 2004).
36.
Michael Alexander and Timothy Garden, "The Arithmetic of Defence Policy,"International Affairs77, 3 (2001): 515.
37.
Future Army Structures announced by the Chief of the General Staff in December 2004 was substantially intended to address this problem. It sought to merge single-battalion regiments into multi-battalion regiments better able to cope with new strategic pressures (see below).
38.
David French, Military Identities (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004).
39.
Manigart, "Restructuring of the Armed Forces," 331.
40.
Urban, Big Boys Rules.
41.
Sean Rayment , "Britain Forms New Special Forces Unit To Fight al-Qa'eda,"Daily Telegraph, July 25, 2004 . http://dailytelegraph.com/.
42.
This connection is symbolized by the SBS's new cap badge and motto. In the past, the SBS's badge featured a frog and parachute wings with the motto "By guile, not strength." This badge was replaced in 2004 by a sword rising out of the seas, with a new motto ("By guile and by strength") furled around the handle of the sword. Although the badge is nominally based on a World War II SBS squadron, it matches the SAS's winged dagger almost exactly. This does not seem to be a coincidence.
43.
Damien Lewis , Operation Certain Death ( London: Arrow, 2005), 575.
44.
Damien Lewis , Bloody Heroes (London: Century, 2006), 164.
45.
Connor, Ghost Force, 380; Mike Curtis, Close Quarter Battle (London: Corgi, 1998), 102-3.
46.
See http://www.mod.uk/issues/security/cm6269/chapter2.htm .
47.
Ratcliffe, Eye of the Storm, 90.
48.
Interview, December 7, 2006.
49.
Interview, January 26, 2006.
50.
S.L.A. Marshall , Men Against Fire (New York : William Morrow, 1968).
See Anthony King, "The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military," Armed Forces & Society 32, 1 (July 2006): 493-512.
62.
Lewis, Operation Certain Death, 297-98.
63.
Ibid., 453.
64.
Ibid., 455-58.
65.
de la Billiere, Looking for Trouble: SAS to Gulf Command (London : HarperCollins, 1995), 330.
66.
Interview, SBS officer, January 15, 2004.
67.
For related discussion on embodiment and training, see Paul Higate, "Theorizing the Embodied Veteran in Times of Hardship," in New Directions in Military Sociology, ed. Eric Ouellet (Whitby, Ontario, Canada: de Sitter, 2005).
68.
Daniel Chambliss , "The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers,"Sociological Theory7, 1 (1989): 70-86.
69.
Ibid., 73.
70.
Sean Rayment, "The Day the SAS Decided Someone Else Could Do Better," Daily Telegraph, September 28, 2003. http://www.sasrogues.co.uk/TheSAS/sas%20shake%20up.htm .
71.
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, In Athena's Camp (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1997).
72.
Ibid., 30.
73.
This increased topsight often leads to a problem of micromanagement, where commanders assume directive command over subordinates simply because they can. For an interesting discussion of this problem, see Mark Lewis, "Army Transformation and the Junior Officer Exodus,"Armed Forces & Society31, 1 ( 2004): 63-93.
74.
James Clark , "Cave Warfare: SAS Take no Prisoners in Battle for Caves,"The Sunday Times, December 1, 2001. http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/article555178,00.html ).
75.
Sean Rayment , "Commanders Want British To Lead Final Assault on Bin Laden," Daily Telegraph, December 2, 2001. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/02/wsas02.xml .
76.
Stephen Biddle , Afghanistan and the Future; Lewis, Bloody Heroes, 205-9.
77.
William Murray and Robert Scales, The Iraq War: A Military History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press , 2003), 70-71.
78.
Eric Braganca , "The Evolution of Special Operations Joint Fires,"Joint Forces Quarterly35 (2003): 66.
79.
Ibid., 66.
80.
Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II (London: Atlantic Books), 335; Murray and Scales, The Iraq War, 70.
81.
Although the point cannot be developed fully here, it is worth noting a connection between the social status of the SAS's officers and the role of the Regiment as a military node. In his initial statement of the regiment's philosophy, David Stirling, the founder the SAS, insisted that "the SAS brooks no sense of class. . . . In the SAS we share with the Brigade of Guards a deep respect for quality but we have an entirely different outlook." Quoted in Geraghty, Who Dares Wins, 9. Recently, the British sociologist Keith Macdonald has suggested that potential shifts are currently occurring in the British officer corps that "indicate that professionalism is gaining ground on `Sloanery,' especially in highly professional Regiments like the Parachute Regiment." Keith Macdonald, "Black Mafia, Loggies and Going for the Stars: The Military Elite Revisited," Sociological Review 52, 1 (2004): 106-35. Given the professionalism of the SAS, it might be assumed that the officer corps of the SAS would be as socially diverse as the Parachute Regiment. In fact, the SAS's officer corps is socially elitist. According to one commentator, "The NCOs [in the SAS] prefer their `Ruperts' [officers] to have public school accents. . . . It has been known for perfectly good officers with strong regional accents to fail SAS selection because they are not regarded as proper officers." Rayment, "The Day the SAS Decided." Analysis of Commanding Officers of the SAS affirms this social elitism, as does unsystematic encounters with SAS officers during the course of this research. A disproportionate number of COs and SAS officers interviewed during this research were not only of elite status but also the sons of prominent British families. There are possible institutional reasons for this. In contrast to the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines, tactical expertise, although a prerequisite, is not decisive for officers among the SAS. Officers are given a brief tour of operational duty as troop commanders, lasting approximately two years, once they have completed their training. However, in the Special Forces, the tactical sphere is monopolized by senior noncommissioned officers who often have a decade or more of experience in the SAS. Rather, the role of officer is operational. Because the Special Forces are involved in politically sensitive missions that often, blur the distinction among pure military activity, intelligence work, and defense diplomacy, the officers' key function is to liaise upward and horizontally with command headquarters in Britain and with in-theatre organizations including embassies, national governments, and nongovernmental organizations from both private and public sectors. The officer's role is to create the appropriate operational links so that SAS teams can perform their tactical work. Accordingly, an elite social background and accent is "what is expected when you are briefing a government minister or a foreign head of state." Rayment, "The Day the SAS Decided."
82.
Saskia Sassen, The Global City (Chichester, UK: Princeton University Press, 1991).
83.
Michael Gerlach, Alliance Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, The Alliance Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
84.
John Dunnigan, The Perfect Soldier (New York: Citadel, 2003), 194; Christopher Bellamy, Knights in White Armour: The New Art of War and Peace (London: Hutchinson, 1996), 6.
85.
Dunnigan, The Perfect Soldier, 9-10.
86.
T. Adams, US Special Operations, 3.
87.
Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future.
88.
Andrew Cordesman, The Iraq War (London: Praeger , 2003), 362.
89.
Tobias Pflüger, Die Neue Bundeswehr (Cologne, Germany: ISP, 1998), 94-95.
90.
Diego Palmer , "France's Military Command Structures in the 1990s," in Command NATO after the Cold War, ed. T. D. Young (Carlisle Barracks, PA : Strategic Studies Institute, 1997 ), 104, 108.
