IS IT JUST A CASE OF PC MEDDLING?

TRUE, the women in question did not have to complete the gruelling ‘ selection’; that would have been impossible. But there are other ways of joining the SAS, and – whisper it quietly – females have actually been doing so for 25 years now.

I recall the first two to be ‘badged’ – as we call the process of enrolling an individual on to the formal strength of the regiment – when I was the Operations Officer at 22 SAS.

They were selected from the ranks of what was to become the Surveillance and reconnaissance regiment – then known just as ‘The Det’ – which carried out undercover surveillance operations.

But these were no ordinary females. They had passed the extremely rigorous Surveillance Detachment selection designed to weed out anyone who would not be able to cope with the unique challenges of undercover operations.

Both these women had served several tours of duty in Northern Ireland – behind the lines as it were – in the toughest parts of the province.

Operating alone or in pairs, they knew that to be captured by the republican movement ensured a hideous death. The senior of the two was a Warrant officer who had won a Queen’s Gallantry Medal before she was 21 and who also happened to be married to my Operations Warrant Officer – himself an experienced ‘Det’ operator as well as an SAS trooper of some standing.

The reason for their recruitment into the SAS was simple – operational needs. As well as in the Northern Ireland conflict, we were heavily involved in several complex operations against nascent Islamic subversive organisations, drug wars in Colombia, as well as the Bosnian Wars.

Having female operators badged in the SAS gave us the flexibility to get close to targets who would have otherwise seen us coming a mile away.

I remember one operation to track an extremely violent republican killer operating overseas, in which two operatives posing as a husband and wife with a pushchair – and with sub-machine guns within easy reach – were able to sit beside him on a park bench. The key, as I’ve said, was operational needs.

But today, it seems, the Military has changed radically. The announcement by the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, that there are no roles in the military that women cannot do surely suggests that SAS selection will be opened up to them. This could mean one of two things: women being allowed to attempt selection as it stands, which they will physically fail; or that selection will be somehow modified to accommodate them.

If the latter is true, it would be utterly misguided because not only would it lower standards, it also is totally unnecessary.

AS I’ve explained, women have been able to join the SAS in the past without going through traditional selection – and this has been driven by operational need.

My fear, however, is that the Defence Secretary’s announcement is not driven by such a need, but by politics.

The fact is that the men of the SAS are selected to be an elite. The physical expectation of them is fearsome.

We can either abandon our ability to complete such operations in order to fall into line with political correctness or accept that there are some things females cannot do biologically. My fervent hope is that Gavin Williamson is doing this for all the right reasons and not because he has caved into the bankrupt military equality lobby which he so long resisted.