Serving officers of Britain’s Special Air Service have issued an unusually stark warning: some experienced SAS personnel are becoming reluctant to volunteer for operations involving the potential use of lethal force, amid growing concerns about prolonged investigations into battlefield decisions.
Such warnings carry particular weight coming from a regiment whose serving personnel rarely speak publicly, even anonymously. It matters because the SAS exists to carry out the missions no other force can: hostage rescue, counter-terrorism, deep-penetration operations where the country’s enemies are met at close quarters and split-second judgements decide who lives and who dies. If the men who volunteer for that work begin to hang back from the hardest jobs, the consequences are not abstract. They are operational readiness, national security, and the lives of future hostages and allies who may one day need the regiment to come for them.
The warnings, delivered anonymously to The Telegraph on Armistice Day, centre on the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, chaired by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave. To be clear about what that inquiry is and is not: it is examining allegations, not findings, that SAS members unlawfully killed 80 or more unarmed Afghan men during detention operations between mid-2010 and mid-2013, and that wrongdoing was concealed. The inquiry cannot establish criminal or civil liability. No soldier has been charged. But around 150 soldiers who served in that period have been warned they face questioning or a demand for written evidence, and in October the inquiry heard that a high proportion of SAS personnel approached had refused to answer questions, invoking protection against self-incrimination.
“Jobs where you might end up shooting people” is how one serving member described the missions troops are now less willing to volunteer for. There have been no outright refusals, the source stressed, and no expectation that soldiers would hesitate when the moment came: commanders remain confident troops would act “correctly” under fire. The distinction is vital. This is not a regiment refusing orders. It is a regiment counting the cost of volunteering. Not every member of the regiment is affected alike, and these are reported warnings from a number of serving members rather than a regimental declaration. But the political significance is unmistakable. Britain expects its Special Forces to undertake extraordinary risks in defence of the country, and it asks a select few to carry the heaviest burden the state can impose. If serving personnel now report that prolonged legal uncertainty is affecting their willingness to volunteer for the hardest missions, the Government must treat that warning as a serious question of national security, military readiness and trust between the state and its Armed Forces. A response that falls short of that standard is not caution. It is neglect of a first-order duty of government.
What Britain asks of its special forces
Consider what service in the SAS actually demands. Selection itself breaks most who attempt it. Those who pass are then asked to deploy repeatedly on operations where intelligence may be incomplete, threats may emerge without warning, and the decision to shoot rests with the soldier on the ground in a fraction of a second. They spend months away from wives, husbands and children. They are trained and expected to act lawfully under extreme pressure, and their commanders express confidence that they do so. In return, the soldier’s expectation is simple: that if he acts lawfully on his country’s orders, his country will stand behind him when the lawyers arrive.
That expectation is now breaking. The Telegraph’s source said members directly affected by the inquiry had become “a bit more leery” about volunteering for dangerous work, “though no outright refusals”. Another consequence is quieter but graver: senior personnel are choosing to leave rather than extend their service, with lawfare cited as “a contributing factor in the motivations of those who are leaving, or choosing not to extend”. These are the men who plan operations, train the next intake and carry the institutional memory of the regiment. The regiment cannot hold on to them because they can earn “excellent” promotions elsewhere, in careers where they feel valued. “We won’t see the problem until it’s too late,” the source warned.
The consequences of losing them are not equal to the loss of ordinary numbers. A special forces unit runs on accumulated judgement: the senior non-commissioned officer who has seen the intelligence prove wrong a dozen times, the officer who knows how to plan a mission where the fallback options have fallback options, the instructor who can pass on what selection alone never teaches. That knowledge takes decades to build and walks out of the door with each departure. Such losses risk weakening operational planning, reducing training capacity and diminishing the specialist leadership on which the regiment depends. It also feeds back into recruitment: who selects into a career where the country’s gratitude may arrive as a witness summons twenty years later? Brigadier Ed Butler, president of the SAS Regimental Association and a former commanding officer of 22 SAS, has already warned that lawfare is deterring candidates from selection altogether. These are reported concerns and foreseeable risks rather than independently established operational damage. But a government does not wait for the damage to be proved before it acts on a warning from inside its own Special Forces.
An inquiry that cannot find its own documents
The inquiry’s story makes the soldiers’ frustration easier to understand. It was announced by the then defence secretary, Ben Wallace, on 15 December 2022, following a BBC Panorama investigation the previous year, and formally established on 22 March 2023 as a statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005. Lord Justice Haddon-Cave indicated he hoped to publish at least an interim report within around 12 to 18 months. Three and a half years after its establishment, no findings have been published. It should be noted that public evidence hearings are a more recent phase of that work; it is the inquiry’s total duration since establishment that has now far outgrown its original timetable.
Nor is the delay the soldiers’ doing. By March 2026 the combined cost of the inquiry and the wider Ministry of Defence effort to resource it, including legal representation, had reached £58 million, with 74 MoD employees spending more than half their working time on it. Then in September 2026 the department revealed, more than three years into the inquiry, that a review of its disclosure systems had identified 97 million previously undisclosed records, held across multiple IT systems, after a database naming failure meant relevant material had never been surfaced. The inquiry chairman described the late disclosure as “troubling and regrettable” and took the “exceptional step” of convening an urgent open hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice. The Ministry of Defence’s own counsel apologised on its behalf, calling it a “regrettable failure” of communication. Thousands of the newly identified records are deemed potentially relevant, including images taken during operations now under investigation; the inquiry had yet to receive any of them when the hearing was held. The deadline for receiving evidence is now set at 30 April 2027.
The Conservative government commissioned this inquiry, and that responsibility stands. The evidence does not establish when, or under which administration, the underlying document-handling failure began, and this article does not claim otherwise. What is certain is who must answer for it now: the failure came to light in September 2026 on this Government’s watch, and it is Keir Starmer’s administration that must account for the Ministry of Defence’s explanation, its cooperation with the independent inquiry and the support provided to the soldiers caught in the process. Parliament is entitled to clear answers on the Ministry of Defence’s document management, its disclosure procedures, the oversight that allowed 97 million records to go undisclosed for so long, and the delay those failures have caused. It is equally entitled to precision about who controls what: the inquiry’s own procedural rulings rest with Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, but the disclosure of evidence, the resourcing of the department’s response and the support given to soldiers are matters squarely within ministerial control, and on those matters Labour answers.
The Defence Secretary’s words are not matched by his Government’s actions
Wes Streeting has chosen his language carefully. At Labour’s conference in September he promised that “the historic misconduct of a few” would not be used “to smear the heroism and integrity of the many”. On Remembrance Sunday he went further, telling BFBS Forces News: “Today, they live under a cloud, worrying about whether they are going to be persecuted rather than thanked for their service. Those are things I need to put right – there’s going to be a process; it’s not simple.”
Recognising that Britain’s Special Forces are operating under a legal cloud is not a solution. It is an admission that the problem exists. The Defence Secretary must now explain what his Government intends to do about it, how quickly it intends to act and how success will be measured. Mr Streeting has spoken of “a process” to come, and his department has asked police to review complaints from soldiers; those are first steps, not remedies. Soldiers who feel the country does not have their back do not serve under a slogan; they serve under a system. The Defence Secretary has not yet answered the questions that flow from his own words: what concrete steps ministers will take to reduce unnecessary investigative delays, what support is available to serving personnel and veterans facing historic investigations, how the Government will protect operational readiness and retention, what safeguards will prevent unjustified repeat investigations, and when ministers will publish a credible timetable for resolving these concerns. Until there are answers, “there’s going to be a process” sounds less like a promise and more like a diagnosis.
Responsibility for the Armed Forces does not end with the Defence Secretary, and the warnings from the SAS reach beyond his department. Warnings about the impact of prolonged military investigations predate Labour’s election victory: the regimental associations and former chiefs of the general staff have been making the case for years. More than two years into Keir Starmer’s premiership, those concerns have now been reinforced by unusually stark accounts from serving SAS personnel themselves. For Keir Starmer, this is no longer simply a dispute about historic investigations. It is a test of whether his Government understands the consequences of allowing legal uncertainty to undermine confidence among the very personnel Britain depends upon for its most dangerous operations. National defence is a fundamental responsibility of government, and on the evidence available to date the Prime Minister has yet to demonstrate that his Government possesses an effective strategy for addressing the reported damage to confidence, recruitment and retention inside the regiment. The question that can no longer be deflected is this: does he regard the reported effects of prolonged investigations on Britain’s special forces as a national security concern requiring an urgent response? The country is entitled to an answer from the man whose first duty is its defence.
The Troubles Bill extends the same uncertainty to another generation of veterans
There is a further test of this Government’s sincerity, and it is sitting in the House of Lords. The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which passed the Commons on 20 October by 330 votes to 178, repeals and replaces key parts of the previous Conservative government’s 2023 Legacy Act. It removes the conditional immunity scheme, restores the ability to bring Troubles-era civil actions, and allows some legacy inquests to resume in the coronial system. The Government’s stated reason is real: the courts had ruled the immunity scheme and parts of the Act incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and successive High Court and Court of Appeal judgments in Northern Ireland compelled a response.
The political choice this Government made, however, was to repeal rather than repair. Ministers point to safeguards added on 19 October, including a “compelling new evidence” threshold before fresh investigations and a requirement for the Attorney General’s consent to serious Troubles-related prosecutions. These are meaningful on paper. Whether they hold in practice is precisely the question the Lords must answer, and the organisations that speak for the men who served do not believe they are sufficient: the SAS, SBS and Special Reconnaissance Regimental Associations have jointly warned that loopholes remain.
The Afghanistan inquiry and Northern Ireland legacy proceedings are separate processes with different legal rules, and they should not be conflated. But the connection in the minds of serving soldiers is real and entirely understandable. “The worry is that those of us being investigated today [over Afghanistan] will still be investigated in our 80s,” the SAS source told The Telegraph. Labour’s own voices have made the same point: Al Carns, a Royal Marine for 24 years who resigned as Minister for the Armed Forces in June, has warned that accountability is not the same as perpetual investigation, and that the Bill would drive veterans into the arms of Reform UK.
The human cost of prolonged investigations
What happens when soldiers are put through years of process is not hypothetical. Five SAS members spent three years under a murder investigation, Operation Tanglement, after a July 2022 mission near Deir ez-Zor in Syria to capture an Islamic State commander, during which the soldiers said they had acted in self-defence. They were arrested on suspicion of murder, some while still deployed, and their homes were searched; according to The Sunday Times’s reporting, they were sent back on operations against Islamic State within 48 hours of questioning. The investigation ended in May 2025 without a single charge being brought. That is not the same as a court finding of innocence, and nothing in this article suggests the men were above the law. The two killed were teenagers, and The Sunday Times has reported that they turned out to have been working for Islamic State. No court ever determined that the soldiers committed murder, none was convicted, and all eight men caught up in the case, the five soldiers and three officers, have since left the military, according to The Times. The departure of experienced personnel following such prolonged investigations raises serious questions about the consequences for military careers, retention and the operational strength of Britain’s Special Forces.
The warnings from the top of Britain’s military have been mounting for months. Gen Lord Sanders, chief of the general staff until June 2024, told The Telegraph that the “pernicious” effect of lawfare had left soldiers feeling the country did not have their back, warning that the Troubles Bill as drafted would “insidiously weaken our moral foundation and breach the covenant between nation and Armed Forces that allows us to fight”. Angus MacIntyre, Reform UK’s Armed Forces spokesman and a former Army and RAF Regiment officer, has pledged that a Reform government would end current and future prosecutions of infantry and special forces personnel who served in Northern Ireland within 100 days, or he would resign. That pledge would require an election victory, primary legislation and provisions capable of surviving legal challenge, and should be judged on delivery rather than announcement. But when serving SAS officers are telling journalists anonymously that soldiers hesitate to volunteer for the missions the country trains them for, the argument is no longer between politicians. It is between the Government and its own Armed Forces.
The MoD says its personnel are “respected worldwide for their professionalism and dedication” and make “extraordinary sacrifices in defence of the nation”. Sincerity is not in doubt. Effect is. Remembrance ceremonies are an important expression of national gratitude. But gratitude must extend beyond wreaths, speeches and public tributes. For a government responsible for sending personnel into danger, the more demanding test is whether those who serve can trust the institutions that stand behind them: whether the Afghanistan inquiry is brought to a timely conclusion, whether the MoD’s disclosure failure is explained and remedied, whether the Troubles Bill’s protections are made real in the Lords, and whether a soldier who acts on his country’s orders within the law can serve without fearing that his reward will be decades of investigation. Public respect must be demonstrated through policy and action. Labour must be judged on those outcomes, not on the warmth of its language about the men and women it sends into danger.
Britain asks a small number of men and women to do things the rest of the country cannot contemplate, in its name, under its flag, within its laws. In return, this country owes them a fair investigation when credible allegations arise, and nothing more than a fair investigation: no delay without explanation, no repetition without fresh evidence, no process that punishes by lasting longer than the war itself. Nobody in this debate argues that credible allegations should escape investigation. They should not, and no fair reading of this article suggests otherwise. Britain cannot demand extraordinary courage from its Armed Forces while allowing avoidable administrative failures, unnecessary delays and inadequate support to weaken their confidence in the institutions they serve. The question is whether this Government can provide timely resolution without compromising justice, and ministers must be judged by measurable results. Wes Streeting has admitted the cloud exists. Taking it off Britain’s special forces is now the job. Nothing less will do.
GREAT BRITISH PAC REACTION
Great British PAC believes that a nation which depends upon the courage, professionalism and sacrifice of its Armed Forces has an obligation to stand behind those who serve it lawfully. Britain’s national security must never be undermined by political complacency, administrative failure or a system of legal uncertainty without end. The principle is not complicated. Britain can investigate credible allegations of serious wrongdoing properly, and it can refuse to let process without end become punishment without verdict. It can do both. Any government worthy of the name must do both. How Labour responds to this warning will be a test of its ability to govern responsibly and to protect Britain’s defence interests.
Great British PAC therefore calls on the Labour Government to act, and to be judged on action:
- Publish a credible plan for improving the timeliness of historic military investigations, within the Government’s legal powers and the inquiry’s independence, and set it before Parliament.
- Explain the Ministry of Defence’s disclosure failure to Parliament, account for the resulting delay and cost, and identify the accountability measures that follow.
- Establish effective safeguards against unjustified repeat investigations, in legislation where legislation is required, while preserving lawful routes to justice for credible allegations.
- Guarantee appropriate legal and welfare support for serving personnel and veterans caught in historic investigations, and publish what that support consists of.
- Assess and publicly address the reported impact of prolonged legal uncertainty on Special Forces recruitment, retention and operational readiness.
- Strengthen the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill’s protections in the House of Lords, where the existing safeguards are demonstrably inadequate, so that the protections ministers describe are real and not rhetorical.
None of this requires ministers to interfere with the independence of the Afghanistan Inquiry or to dictate its findings. Most of it lies within ministers’ existing powers today; the legislative safeguards would require bills passed through Parliament, and other measures depend on cooperation from independent bodies. None of it lies beyond the reach of a government that chooses to act. That is precisely the point.
Recruitment, retention, readiness and the covenant between this nation and its Armed Forces are all in the balance. The men and women of our special forces carry the heaviest burden the state can impose. They ask only that the state stands behind them when they act lawfully on its orders. We will not stop campaigning until it does.
Claire Bullivant, Chief Executive Officer of Great British PAC, said:
“What a shameful, spineless disgrace. Britain’s SAS, the most feared and respected fighting force in the world, now has soldiers reportedly more frightened of being hunted by lawyers at home than facing terrorists abroad.
“Just think about that. Men prepared to take a bullet for Britain are being made to wonder whether Britain will stab them in the back.
“Labour stands at the Cenotaph, bows its heads, wears its poppies and lectures us about sacrifice, yet cannot give our bravest soldiers the confidence that their country will stand behind them.
“Our enemies must be laughing. Why bother trying to defeat Britain’s Armed Forces when years of legal uncertainty are already threatening to destroy their morale from within?
“Labour ministers are presiding over a crisis of trust with the very men and women responsible for defending this nation.
“Britain’s soldiers should be hunting terrorists, not looking over their shoulders for lawyers. A Government that sends its finest men into battle but leaves them fearing persecution at home isn’t defending this country, it’s betraying the people who do. And that is a national disgrace.”
