[🇬🇧] Special Air Service (SAS)

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Mobility Troop​

Experts in the use of vehicles and heavy support weapons, the men of mobility troop provide the SAS with the ability to move around the battlefield and pack a big punch, independently of other forces.

Since their inception in the deserts of Northern Africa during World War 2, the Special Air Service has employed vehicles. Fixing multiple machine guns to jeeps, the SAS would drive onto German airfields, shoot up the parked planes and ammo stores, then retreat into the desert. Mobility troop ensures that the skills required for such operations stay intact within the squadrons.

Those members of the SAS who are assigned to Mobility Troop become masters of the various required disciplines, including :

• Basic mobility: Getting heavily laden vehicles over all kinds of terrain.
• Maintaining and repairing the vehicles.: When operating often deep behind enemy lines calling the RAC is not permitted! Mobility troop members go on extensive REME (Royal Electric Mechanical Engineers) training courses to gain their skills at maintaining vehicles.
• Navigation: SAS mobile operations often take place often over featureless terrain. Modern day SAS troopers have access to electronic navigation aids such as GPS (Global Positioning System) but must be able to fall back on more basic skills such as map reading and navigating by the stars.
• Logistics: Long missions behind enemy lines and away from re-supply require strict rationing of fuel, ammo and other stores. Everything needed for a mission has to be carefully loaded onto the vehicles before leaving.
• Use of heavy support weapons. : An SAS fighting column of 8 vehicles can, when used correctly, attack with the firepower and effect of a much larger unit. Heavy weapons such as mortars, anti-tank missiles, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers can be brought to bear on the enemy whilst other elements push forward. These heavy weapons can be fired from the vehicles or dismounted and used on foot.

Vehicles​

Some of the vehicles in Mobility Troop's inventory include:

Land Rover 110 Desert Patrol Vehicle​

A special version of the standard army Land Rover, SAS 110s, or 'pinkies', are usually festooned with machine guns and other weapons. Please note these have been phased out in favour of the Supacat Jackal and Jackal II:

Bushmaster IMV

Longline LSV

Unimog U1100​

Motorcycles​

SAS Land Rover columns are accompanied by several motorcycle outriders. SAS motorcyclists scout ahead and around the main column, searching for the enemy and finding routes. In covert environments where radios aren't used, the outriders pass information between the wagons.

Snow Vehicles​

Mobility troop operate several vehicles designed for arctic conditions including snow mobiles and tracked vehicles such as the Hagglunds BV 206D. The SAS Sabre Squadrons would regularly practice in Norway as part of their NATO commitment was protecting Europe's Northern Flank against a Soviet advance.

 

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Special Air Service (SAS) - Mountain Troop​

Experts in mountain climbing and arctic warfare, SAS Mountain Troops are trained to survive and fight in extreme conditions. Mountain troop's skills can be called on anywhere from the frozen hills of Norway to the mountains of Afghanistan.

Mountain troopers train in various European climbing schools such as the German Alpine Guides course at the Mountain Warfare School at Mittenwald, reaching a proficiency that rivals the best climbers in the world. Many serving and ex-SAS men go on climbing expeditions up some of the world's highest mountains, including Everest.

During the cold war, Mountain Troop's skills would have been required in Norway, guarding Nato's northern flanks against an expected Soviet push. Their skills have been put to the test during the 1982 Falklands conflict and, more recently, in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan, where their training in the disciplines of high-altitude warfare paid off.

The men of Mountain Troop are highly skilled in:

• Scaling sheer cliffs and rock faces
• Arctic survival techniques
• Long distance skiing

Such skills allow the SAS to reach areas that most sensible people would consider inaccessable and to attack the enemy from unexpected directions. Mountain troop climbers use a range of specialised climbing equipment that includes:

• special climbing shoes with sticky rubber soles
• climbing harnesses
• carabiners for hooking onto climbing rope lines
• nuts - metal wedges that fit into cracks, used to secure climbing lines