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Special Air Service
The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, direct action and covert reconnaissance. Much of the information about the SAS is highly classified, and the unit is not commented on by either the British government or the Ministry of Defence due to the secrecy and sensitivity of its operations. The corps currently consists of the 22 Special Air Service Regiment, the regular component, as well as the 21 Special Air Service Regiment (Artists) (Reserve) and the 23 Special Air Service Regiment (Reserve), which are reserve units, all under the operational command of United Kingdom Special Forces (UKSF). Its sister unit is the Royal Navy's Special Boat Service which specialises in maritime counter-terrorism. Both units are under the operational control of the Dire ...
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Special Forces
Special forces and special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equipped forces using unconventional techniques and modes of employment". Special forces emerged in the early 20th century, with a significant growth in the field during the Second World War, when "every major army involved in the fighting" created formations devoted to special operations behind enemy lines. Depending on the country, special forces may perform functions including airborne operations, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, foreign internal defense, covert ops, direct action, hostage rescue, high-value targets/manhunt, intelligence operations, mobility operations, and unconventional warfare. In Russian-speaking countries, special forces of any country are typically called , an acronym for "special purpose". In the United ...
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Charles Guthrie, Baron Guthrie Of Craigiebank
Field Marshal Charles Ronald Llewelyn Guthrie, Baron Guthrie of Craigiebank, (born 17 November 1938) is a retired senior officer of the British Army who served as Chief of the General Staff from 1994 to 1997 and Chief of the Defence Staff from 1997 until his retirement in 2001. Guthrie's military career saw service with the Welsh Guards and the Special Air Service; he was closely involved in military operations in Northern Ireland and provided advice to the British Government during the Bosnian War and the Kosovo War. Early life Born in Chelsea, London into a Scottish landed family, Guthrie was the elder son of Major Ronald Guthrie and Nina ''née'' Llewelyn.''Who's Who 2010'', A & C Black, 2010, He was educated at Harrow School and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. As an Old Harrovian, and due to his seniority in the British Army, Harrow School's Combined Cadet Force contingent, the Harrow Rifle Corps, chose to name an annual inter-CCF competition in Guthrie's honou ...
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Ministry Of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence (MOD or MoD) is the department responsible for implementing the defence policy set by His Majesty's Government, and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The MOD states that its principal objectives are to defend the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and its interests and to strengthen international peace and stability. The MOD also manages day-to-day running of the armed forces, contingency planning and defence procurement. The expenditure, administration and policy of the MOD are scrutinised by the Defence Select Committee, except for Defence Intelligence which instead falls under the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. History During the 1920s and 1930s, British civil servants and politicians, looking back at the performance of the state during the First World War, concluded that there was a need for greater co-ordination between the three services that made up the armed forces of the United Kingd ...
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British Government
ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_established = , state = United Kingdom , address = 10 Downing Street, London , leader_title = Prime Minister ( Rishi Sunak) , appointed = Monarch of the United Kingdom (Charles III) , budget = 882 billion , main_organ = Cabinet of the United Kingdom , ministries = 23 ministerial departments, 20 non-ministerial departments , responsible = Parliament of the United Kingdom , url = The Government of the United Kingdom (commonly referred to as British Government or UK Government), officially His Majesty's Government (abbreviated to HM Government), is the central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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Classified Information
Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, and mishandling of the material can incur criminal penalties. A formal security clearance is required to view or handle classified material. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation. Documents and other information must be properly marked "by the author" with one of several (hierarchical) levels of sensitivity—e.g. restricted, confidential, secret, and top secret. The choice of level is based on an impact assessment; governments have their own criteria, including how to determine the classification of an information asset and rules on how to protect information classified at each level. This process often includes security clearances for personnel handling the information. Some corporations and non-gove ...
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Reconnaissance
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops ( skirmishers, long-range reconnaissance patrol, U.S. Army Rangers, cavalry scouts, or military intelligence specialists), ships or submarines, crewed or uncrewed reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, or by setting up observation posts. Espionage is usually considered to be different from reconnaissance, as it is performed by non-uniformed personnel operating behind enemy lines. Often called recce (British, Canadian and Australian English) or recon (American English), the word for this activity has at its root the associated verb ''reconnoitre'' or ''reconnoiter''. Etymology The word from the Middle French ''reconoissance''. Overview Reconnaissance conducted by ground forces includes special reconnaissance, armored reconnaissance, amphibio ...
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Covert
Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret. Secrecy is often controversial, depending on the content or nature of the secret, the group or people keeping the secret, and the motivation for secrecy. Secrecy by government entities is often decried as excessive or in promotion of poor operation; excessive revelation of information on individuals can conflict with virtues of privacy and confidentiality. It is often contrasted with social transparency. Secrecy can exist in a number of different ways: encoding or encryption (where mathematical and technical strategies are used to hide messages), true secrecy (where restrictions are put upon those who take part of the message, such as through government security classification) and obfuscation, where secrets are hidden in plain sight behind complex idiosyncrati ...
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Direct Action (military)
Direct action (DA) is a term used in the context of military special operations for small-scale raids, ambushes, sabotage or similar actions. The US Department of Defense has defined direct action as "Short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments and which employ specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets. Direct action differs from conventional offensive actions in the level of physical and political risk, operational techniques, and the degree of discriminate and precise use of force to achieve specific objectives." The US military and many of its allies consider DA one of the basic special operations missions. Some units specialize in it, such as the Navy SEALs and 75th Ranger Regiment, and other units, such as US Army Special Forces, have DA capabilities but focus more on other operations. Unconvention ...
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Hostage Rescue
A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized, such as a relative, employer, law enforcement or government to act, or refrain from acting, in a certain way, often under threat of serious physical harm or death to the hostage(s) after expiration of an ultimatum. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition'' (1910-1911) defines a hostage as "a person who is handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war." A party who seizes one or more hostages is known as a hostage-taker; if the hostages are present voluntarily, then the receiver is known as a host. In civil society, along with kidnapping for ransom and human trafficking (often willing to ransom its captives when lucrative or to trade on influence), hostage taking is a crimina ...
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Counter-terrorism
Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, business, and intelligence agencies use to combat or eliminate terrorism. Counterterrorism strategies are a government's motivation to use the instruments of national power to defeat terrorists, the organizations they maintain, and the networks they contain. If definitions of terrorism are part of a broader insurgency, counterterrorism may employ counterinsurgency measures. The United States Armed Forces uses the term foreign internal defense for programs that support other countries' attempts to suppress insurgency, lawlessness, or subversion, or to reduce the conditions under which threats to national security may develop. History The first counter-terrorism body formed was the Special Irish Branch of the Metropolitan Police, later renamed the Special Branch after it expanded its s ...
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Corps
Corps (; plural ''corps'' ; from French , from the Latin "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon I, the formation was first named as such in 1805. The size of a corps varies greatly, but from two to five divisions and anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 are the numbers stated by the US Department of Defense. Within military terminology a corps may be: *an operational formation, sometimes known as a field corps, which consists of two or more divisions, such as the , later known as ("First Corps") of Napoleon I's ); *an administrative corps (or mustering) – that is a specialized branch of a military service (such as an artillery corps, a medical corps, or a force of military police) or; *in some cases, a distinct service within a national military (such as the United States Marine Corps). These usages often overlap. Corps may also be a generic term for a non-military organization, such as the US Peace Corps an ...
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David Stirling
Sir Archibald David Stirling (15 November 1915 – 4 November 1990) was a Scottish officer in the British army, a mountaineer, and the founder and creator of the Special Air Service (SAS). He saw active service during the Second World War. Early life Stirling was born at his family's ancestral home, Keir House, in the parish of Lecropt, Perthshire on 15 November 1915. He was the son of Brigadier-General Archibald Stirling, of Keir, and Margaret Fraser, daughter of Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat (a descendant of Charles II). Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat was a first cousin. His paternal grandparents were Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet and Lady Anna Maria Leslie-Melville. Stirling was educated at the Catholic boarding school Ampleforth College, but attended only a year at Trinity College, Cambridge before departing to Paris to become an artist. At with an athletic figure, Stirling was training to climb Mount Everest when the Second World War broke out. Secon ...
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