Britain will get new elite terror troops to assist police and MI5

Military chiefs have fashioned a brand new home counter-terror unit to offset strain on Britain’s Special Forces.

Razor Squadron is the primary new particular operations staff to be established because the creation of the Special Forces Support Group initially of the Afghanistan battle.

The new unit will assist police and MI5 in counter-terror operations.

Duties will embrace surveillance, hostage rescue and quickly organising cordons throughout the motorway community.

Boasting 230 specially-trained troops from throughout the Armed Forces, it’s primarily based in Hereford, the house of the SAS. Despite its Army-sounding pedigree, nevertheless, three-quarters of its complement are at the moment drawn from the Royal Marines, sources say.

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Experts in close-quarter fight, members carry an array of particular weapons.

In response to the 2017 Manchester Arena assault, proper, and the Parsons Green blast, the federal government established Operation Temperer.

This positioned 100 SAS, SBS (Special Boat Service) or Special Forces items on alert to help counter-terror police within the occasion of an incident. The UK’s risk stage at the moment stands at “substantial” – between “critical” and “low”.

In 2020, round 16 SBS troops used Marlin helicopters to board the hijacked Nave Andromeda oil tanker within the Channel and free its crew.

Two years earlier, SBS performed an identical operation to free 22 crew members from the container ship Grande Tema after it was seized by stowaways.

But with the UK’s Special Forces additionally dedicated to the coaching and advising of Ukraine’s Special Forces, one other answer needed to be discovered.

Approval for the brand new staff has been signed off by ministers, though no point out of it has been made publicly and few throughout the Armed Forces are even conscious of its existence.

Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin has mentioned funding should be sourced from present operational budgets.

A senior supply mentioned: “The new unit has been raised to fill a gap that has been created with the growing demand on Special Forces units.”