UK forms new special forces unit to fight al-Qaeda

[2RHPZ]

Now I understand meaning of the article that I posted previously 22 July 2004 that Second SAS Regiment will be created http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20337&highlight=sas

Britain forms new special forces unit to fight al-Qaeda
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 25/07/2004)

A new special forces regiment is being created to infiltrate Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The Reconnaissance and Surveillance Regiment will work closely with the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service. Its mission will be to penetrate groups, either directly or by "turning" terrorists into double agents.

It will be given the authority to operate around the world, working closely with friendly intelligence agencies such as the CIA and Mossad.

Security chiefs hope that the regiment, comprising up to 600 troops, will run a network of agents providing the West with accurate intelligence on potential terrorist operations, allowing attacks to be foiled. It will at first be formed from members of a highly secret surveillance agency - the Joint Communications Unit Northern Ireland - which has worked in Ulster for more than 20 years. The unit, which worked with the SAS, MI5 and the Special Branch, perfected the art of covert surveillance in urban and rural areas and created a network of double agents who supplied the British security forces with intelligence on terrorist attacks.

Its success stemmed from its ability to plant listening devices and cameras in the homes and cars of terrorists, to bug phones and to monitor suspects at close quarters.

Such was the secrecy surrounding the unit that few of its operations were made public. Members of the unit are, however, some of the most highly decorated men and women in the Services.

One of its successes was providing the information for the SAS operation in 1988 which led to the shooting dead of three IRA terrorists who were planning to attack British forces in Gibraltar. The unit also took part in an operation that thwarted an IRA plot to attack a police station at Loughgall, County Tyrone, in 1987. Eight IRA members were killed by the SAS in a carefully planned ambush.

Volunteers for the regiment, both male and female, will be taken from all three branches of the Armed Forces. Officers are keen to recruit those of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance, as well as Muslims and members of ethnic minorities.

Recruitment has begun and volunteers must pass an intensive six-month training course, learning covert surveillance, communications, driving skills and first aid as well as close-quarter battle skills, using a variety of weapons. Priority will be given to those able to infiltrate or blend in with Islamic terror groups, rather than, as with the SAS, their fitness or fighting capabilities.

One officer said: "The SAS's role is essentially to kill people. This new regiment's role is to provide the intelligence for the SAS to do that."

Those who pass - a 90 per cent failure rate is expected - will be sent on an Arabic course at the Armed Forces language school at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.

The unit will be commanded by a lieutenant colonel with a special forces background, although not necessarily a member of the SAS, and will be based in South Wales. He will report to the Director of Special Forces.

A senior officer associated with the formation of the new regiment said: "This unit will be used primarily for intelligence gathering. The work will be dangerous, as it was in Northern Ireland, and operators will be taught how to protect themselves. The threat from Irish terror groups is far less now and although we will keep a presence in Ulster, it is time to use this force on a worldwide basis."

Source (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/25/nrsr25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/25/ixnewstop.html)

[Supes]

Doesn't MI6 have some kind of group or unit for this kind of thing? LIke a CIA SAD or something of that nature?

[DeltaWhisky58]

If this is correct, basically it would appear to be a case of 14 Int. goes large!

[Midav]

As much as it's probably common semse that units like this are around, I wish certain things were not published by the media at all....

[martinexsquaddie]

looks like my 12 year olds with bows and arrows will be needed after all rofl
where the hell are they going to get the troops for this :(

[RFSU]

Yeah its just 14 Int. with a new name

[n4292936]

looks like my 12 year olds with bows and arrows will be needed after all rofl
where the hell are they going to get the troops for this :(
im sure some of the several thousand that are being surplused (yes I can turn that into a verb) will be encouraged to apply.

[2RHPZ]

As much as it's probably common semse that units like this are around, I wish certain things were not published by the media at all....

Yes, I wish they weren´t too. Unfortunately we are inside the digital era ... Internet is a mighty power. We cannot go back to the 80´s. So there is a time for desinformations, especially for so called "overfilling enemy with infos" and caused he won´t be able to sort things out and, above all, cause he will fear things, no matter if they exist or not. Of course, I am not speaking about this case, I have no additional infos on that new unit.

[Steve Andrews]

If this is correct, basically it would appear to be a case of 14 Int. goes large!

Didn't they get disbanded? ;)

[DPGLAW]

If this is correct, basically it would appear to be a case of 14 Int. goes large!


what is "14 int"? I have seen it mentioned but no information, I have searched for it but found nothing....perhaps, thats the way it it supposed to be but if anyone has any links to info. about them please post them...thanks

[fantassin]

Read "The Operators" by James Rennie to have an idea of what 14 Int. used to be. It has now changed a lot but it's the only book about it so far.


(from Amazon.com)

This is an account of life with 14 Intelligence Company - a British military intelligence unit established in 1972 to conduct covert surveillance operations against terrorist organisations (of all stripes) in Northern Ireland. The unit is also known colloquially as '14 Int', and the 'Det' (because it is organised into 'Detachments'). The events related in the book occurred in the 1980s, but the unit is reportedly still in existence.

I first learned of 14 Int in Mark Urban's excellent "Big Boys' Rules". But Urban's book - about the role of special forces and the intelligence services in N.I. - is concerned with a wider thesis and 14 Int is only a part of its story. Peter Taylour's "Brits" contains rather more on 14 Int, including interviews with a couple of ex-Det members, but at times it veers perilously close to the rocks of sensationalism. However, both those books deal with 14 Int from an external perspective, whereas James Rennie tells the story from within this little known unit. He covers selection, training and actual operations.

The selection and training phases absorb well over half the book but that is no criticism: these sections are a gripping read. Such heavy emphasis on the training is quite unusual in this genre, and the effect is to impart a sense of the enormous, nay exhaustive, care and preparation that go into selecting and producing 'Operators'.

Selection standards for entry into the unit are extremely rigourous, both physically and mentally. The work of 14 Int is much more cerebral than that of other special forces groupings. Accordingly selection fortnight intersperses punishing tests of physical endurance with fiendish mental tests of memory, observation, concentration, planning, effective communication and so on (and on and on). Uniquely amongst British special forces, 14 Int contains women. The standards expected of them in selection and afterwards are exactly the same as those for the men. However far from being the granite-jawed East German shot-putter types you might have expected, they sound rather charming and feminine. Rennie's descriptions of these formidable individuals make very interesting reading. They are clearly worthy successors to the heroines of the SOE.

Those who successfully pass the selection move on to six months of gruelling training. Much training is conducted right here in the familiar and comfortable surroundings of dear old Blighty - on our public roads, and in our very own sleepy little towns and bustling cities. It must have been rather odd for the author and his fellow trainees to be conducting their cloak and dagger lessons amidst a populace in which friends and loved ones moved. To be forced to peer behind the veil of familiar and cherished perceptions of life in England would to me have felt like a violation and left me wondering what else there was. This is not the same as fighting (or preparing for) a war in some far and alien place. Homesick and frightened soldiers dream dreams of home. What, I wondered, do 14 Int members dream of?

Seeking out the psychological subtext is very important to an appreciation of what Rennie experienced, of what it is like to serve in this kind of unit. Isolation and loneliness seem to be strong abiding themes of Rennie's recollections of life in the Det. What is intriguing is whether he recognised that himself as he was writing this. The telling phrases and passages are littered throughout: having just passed through the hell of selection he suffers a personal rejection; his previous two years of service in Germany leave him bereft of functioning friendships in the UK; he resorts to placing ads in the lonely hearts columns to find a companion (he strikes gold here, meeting his wife to-be, but that isn't the point); much later, undergoing severe interrogation, he comforts himself with thoughts of what his beloved might be doing at that very moment; within the unit itself, Operators are forbidden to share the details of their lives with each other, and false names are used; Operators are housed in individual portakabins to which they return at all hours to slump in exhaustion on the bed for a few hours before heading out again...It all adds up to a picture of emotional isolation. Loneliness was, I think, a strong contributary factor in his decision to resign his commission and return to civilian life.

On the whole, the impression gained is of a pretty wonderful group - switched on, disciplined and resourceful, but also friendly, egalitarian and relaxed. Rennie himself seems a thoroughly decent type too, and he is balanced and mature in his comments about 'the opposition' and about his colleagues.

I gave the book five stars because, although I am hardly in a position to know whether it is an accurate account of life in the 'Det', I certainly found it an enthralling read.

...this is a really engaging read. From now on, if I am ever passed up by a car full of serious-looking people driving like absolute lunatics I will think twice before waving a fist at them at the next set of lights!!











The Operators: On the Streets with Britain's Most Secret Ser, October 4, 2003



Reviewer: C Lowe from Berkshire, United Kingdom
This book is a fantastic read! Found it gripping, so much so that it only took me two days to read it from cover to cover... I just could not put it down!










Was this review helpful to you?**



*

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Fascinating account of undercover work, June 26, 2002



Reviewer: A reader from Colchester, Essex United Kingdom
What an eye-opener - this book, brilliantly written, tells of undercover ops in NI during the 1980s. The writing is fluent and the story gripping - who would have guessed what goes on right under our noses! I would highly recommend this to anyone with even the remotest interest in special forces and/or the situation in Northern Ireland. Top marks!

[DeltaWhisky58]

Read "The Operators" by James Rennie to have an idea of what 14 Int. used to be. It has now changed a lot but it's the only book about it so far.


(from Amazon.com)

This is an account of life with 14 Intelligence Company - a British military intelligence unit established in 1972 to conduct covert surveillance operations against terrorist organisations (of all stripes) in Northern Ireland. The unit is also known colloquially as '14 Int', and the 'Det' (because it is organised into 'Detachments'). The events related in the book occurred in the 1980s, but the unit is reportedly still in existence.

I first learned of 14 Int in Mark Urban's excellent "Big Boys' Rules". But Urban's book - about the role of special forces and the intelligence services in N.I. - is concerned with a wider thesis and 14 Int is only a part of its story. Peter Taylour's "Brits" contains rather more on 14 Int, including interviews with a couple of ex-Det members, but at times it veers perilously close to the rocks of sensationalism. However, both those books deal with 14 Int from an external perspective, whereas James Rennie tells the story from within this little known unit. He covers selection, training and actual operations.

The selection and training phases absorb well over half the book but that is no criticism: these sections are a gripping read. Such heavy emphasis on the training is quite unusual in this genre, and the effect is to impart a sense of the enormous, nay exhaustive, care and preparation that go into selecting and producing 'Operators'.

Selection standards for entry into the unit are extremely rigourous, both physically and mentally. The work of 14 Int is much more cerebral than that of other special forces groupings. Accordingly selection fortnight intersperses punishing tests of physical endurance with fiendish mental tests of memory, observation, concentration, planning, effective communication and so on (and on and on). Uniquely amongst British special forces, 14 Int contains women. The standards expected of them in selection and afterwards are exactly the same as those for the men. However far from being the granite-jawed East German shot-putter types you might have expected, they sound rather charming and feminine. Rennie's descriptions of these formidable individuals make very interesting reading. They are clearly worthy successors to the heroines of the SOE.

Those who successfully pass the selection move on to six months of gruelling training. Much training is conducted right here in the familiar and comfortable surroundings of dear old Blighty - on our public roads, and in our very own sleepy little towns and bustling cities. It must have been rather odd for the author and his fellow trainees to be conducting their cloak and dagger lessons amidst a populace in which friends and loved ones moved. To be forced to peer behind the veil of familiar and cherished perceptions of life in England would to me have felt like a violation and left me wondering what else there was. This is not the same as fighting (or preparing for) a war in some far and alien place. Homesick and frightened soldiers dream dreams of home. What, I wondered, do 14 Int members dream of?

Seeking out the psychological subtext is very important to an appreciation of what Rennie experienced, of what it is like to serve in this kind of unit. Isolation and loneliness seem to be strong abiding themes of Rennie's recollections of life in the Det. What is intriguing is whether he recognised that himself as he was writing this. The telling phrases and passages are littered throughout: having just passed through the hell of selection he suffers a personal rejection; his previous two years of service in Germany leave him bereft of functioning friendships in the UK; he resorts to placing ads in the lonely hearts columns to find a companion (he strikes gold here, meeting his wife to-be, but that isn't the point); much later, undergoing severe interrogation, he comforts himself with thoughts of what his beloved might be doing at that very moment; within the unit itself, Operators are forbidden to share the details of their lives with each other, and false names are used; Operators are housed in individual portakabins to which they return at all hours to slump in exhaustion on the bed for a few hours before heading out again...It all adds up to a picture of emotional isolation. Loneliness was, I think, a strong contributary factor in his decision to resign his commission and return to civilian life.

On the whole, the impression gained is of a pretty wonderful group - switched on, disciplined and resourceful, but also friendly, egalitarian and relaxed. Rennie himself seems a thoroughly decent type too, and he is balanced and mature in his comments about 'the opposition' and about his colleagues.

I gave the book five stars because, although I am hardly in a position to know whether it is an accurate account of life in the 'Det', I certainly found it an enthralling read.

...this is a really engaging read. From now on, if I am ever passed up by a car full of serious-looking people driving like absolute lunatics I will think twice before waving a fist at them at the next set of lights!!

The Operators: On the Streets with Britain's Most Secret Ser, October 4, 2003

Reviewer: C Lowe from Berkshire, United Kingdom
This book is a fantastic read! Found it gripping, so much so that it only took me two days to read it from cover to cover... I just could not put it down!

Was this review helpful to you?**

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Fascinating account of undercover work, June 26, 2002


Reviewer: A reader from Colchester, Essex United Kingdom
What an eye-opener - this book, brilliantly written, tells of undercover ops in NI during the 1980s. The writing is fluent and the story gripping - who would have guessed what goes on right under our noses! I would highly recommend this to anyone with even the remotest interest in special forces and/or the situation in Northern Ireland. Top marks!

Incorrect.

One Up by Sarah Ford, the story of a WREN (women's Royal Navy) helo mechanic who signed up for 14 Int. in the mid/late-1980s. A seriously good read and more detailled and up to date than Rennie's book.

Andy McNab (SAS), Duncan Falconer & Don Camsell (both SBS) give fair coverage to 14 Int. tours in their books.

14 Int. was not disbanded.

[fantassin]

True, if you want to learn about her difficulties with men and how many time Mrs Ford got laid in different places by different people, One Up is the book....[/i]

[Yosy]

The 14 int was the first thing that came to my mind when I was reading this. It's just a case of 14 int out of Northen Ireland and into the arab world.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

I wonder how the existing all Asian teams within MI5 and MI6 will cooperate with this new unit.

[Khabbi]

Good thing they're keeping it a secret :|