- A US commander appeared to suggest UK special forces were operating in Ukraine.
- Gen. Bryan Fenton told The AP that the US was “taking a lot of lessons” from UK special forces in Ukraine.
- The UK Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the report.
A US commander has appeared to suggest that UK special forces were operating in Ukraine.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Gen. Bryan Fenton, the Commander of US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), spoke about plans to restructure Green Beret teams based on lessons from British special forces in Ukraine.
“A 12-person detachment might be up-gunned,” Fenton said, explaining that as warfare becomes more high-tech, there may be a need for teams to have a cyber expert, an Air Force pilot, or a cryptologist, for example.
I am very sure that there are British special forces in Ukraine.
After one of his visits to Ukraine, Michael Kofman was being interviewed about the possibility of soldiers going in and partway through started laughing and said “if anyone has people there, I’m sure the British do”. The interviewer asked him why he thought that and he laughed even harder and said “let’s just call it one analyst’s guess”.
My guess is that they’re present and that it’s an open secret that they’re there, but that the British government chooses not to officially announce the fact.
Later, they had that German military discussion that leaked and IIRC they said that the British had about 50 people in Ukraine, more than anyone else…IIRC we in the US had 17. The Brits were doing things like helping target British weapons (and French weapons, as IIRC the French didn’t have anyone present). The Germans were talking about having the British target their weapons too if they decided to send Taurus missiles, so that they could avoid putting anyone in-country.
Probably being present as trainers or consultants for British systems, intelligence, tactics etc. I can’t imagine they operate at the front or you’d be inevitably getting body bags back and you can only keep quiet so many.
I believe that the German discussion had something to to with programming weapons, which I assume – given the talk of Taurus and of the British dealing with French weapons and the British Storm Shadow and French SCALP having a common heritage – has to with the Storm Shadow/SCALP.
They may be doing other things too, but my guess is that that’s one thing.
IIRC Latvia also had some, don’t remember who else was on the list.
Is this keeping the British in charge of targeting so the Ukrainians don’t target the Kremlin directly with the long range weapons?