BRITAIN’S special forces are to be dramatically increased under plans being drawn up by the government.

John Hutton, the defence secretary, will this week signal radical reform of the armed forces in response to “lessons learnt” from the war in Afghanistan, where specialised units are seen to be playing a vital role.

He will tell a national security conference in London tomorrow that “the next decade must see a major rebalancing of our armed forces” towards special forces in response to the new threats.

He will say: “UK special forces are among the best in the world. Capable, effective, respected and contributing massively to the defeat of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Hutton will also reveal that Britain and America are carrying out an “urgent joint analysis” of where the countries’ armed forces can best work together.

Critics are likely to express concern that the reforms hide an agenda to make the armed forces more like those of Australia, which has a high concentration on its special forces capability but only seven infantry battalions to the UK’s 40.

But Hutton will tell the conference, organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research, that the war in Afghanistan is “tearing up the rule book” and consigning 60 years of forces tactics to history.

“The female suicide bomber; the boy tricked into killing himself and British soldiers by pushing a wheelbarrow of explosives. Such threats strike a challenge to the core of how we operate.”

When British troops are deployed to fight that threat, “there is only one outcome we can countenance – winning” and that requires “a rebalancing of investment in equipment and people to meet the challenge of irregular warfare”.

Defence officials said Hutton was not seeking to prejudge how much the armed forces should be dominated by special forces but “whether these sorts of capabilities would be more widely seen across the forces as the sort of thing we should look at”.

The SAS has made a significant contribution to coalition special forces operations in Iraq, impressing American commanders.

Its Royal Marines counterpart, the Special Boat Service, has dominated operations in Afghanistan. Both have been assisted by the Special Forces Support Group and special forces intelligence units.

The SAS has now been redirected from Iraq to provide a greatly enlarged UK special forces element in Afghanistan that is said to number more than 1,000.

Hutton will also warn his officials they must “ensure that the bureaucracy that supports the front line and every pound we spend as a nation in support of our armed forces is equally agile and adaptable to the realities of modern conflict”.

Commonwealth cousins prop up the British Army, page9

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