In 1966, 120 Australian soldiers arrived at a dusty forward operating base in South Vietnam. They were members of the Special Air Service Regiment, and the Americans did not quite know what to make of them. The US had half a million troops in country, entire divisions, aircraft carriers offshore, billions of dollars in hardware.

 And here was this tiny unit from Perth, Western Australia, unpacking their gear with the casual energy of men who had just come back from a beach holiday. One American officer reportedly looked at the Australians and said it would be a Sunday stroll compared to what his boys were doing. 3 years later, the Pentagon was desperately trying to copy their methods and failing.

 So, what did 120 Australians know that half a million Americans did not? To understand that, go back to a patch of scrub land north of Perth to a place called Bindun where the Australian military built one of the most brutal selection courses on the planet. If you enjoy deep dives into elite units, forgotten wars, and the methods armies tried to hide behind classified reports, [music] hit like and subscribe because once you see what the SASR were doing in Vietnam, a lot of the official story starts to look very different. The Australian SAS was born

in 1957. Modeled on the British Special Air Service that had terrorized Nazi forces across North Africa during World War II, the Australians took the British blueprint and did what Australians tend to do with borrowed ideas. They made it harder. The selection course at Bendune training area runs for 21 days.

 Up to 170 candidates [music] show up. Most don’t survive the first week, and not because they fail a physical test. The course is designed to strip away every layer of pretense until the directing staff can see what the commanding officer once described as the soul of the individual. Candidates carry 30 kg packs across the Western Australian bush in scorching heat.

 They get almost no sleep, almost no food, [music] and nobody tells them what’s coming next. That uncertainty is the real test because in the field nobody hands you a schedule. The men who survive been Dune then face an 18month reinforcement cycle, jungle warfare, desert reconnaissance, maritime operations, high altitude parachute insertions from 25,000 ft.

 The whole process takes nearly 2 years. And at the end of it, you get a soldier who can operate in a five-man patrol, hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines for weeks at a time without anyone knowing they exist. That last part is the key to everything that came next. The regiment’s first real combat came in Borneo in 1965.

Indonesia was waging an undeclared war against Malaysia and President Sukarno was sending thousands of troops across the jungle border into Sarowak and Sabah. The British asked for help. Australia sent the SAS. But these weren’t normal patrols. Under Operation Clarret, small teams crossed into Indonesian territory on missions so sensitive that if they were caught, the Australian government would deny they existed.

 There would be no rescue, no diplomatic intervention. You were on your own. One squadron conducted patrols in Surowak from February to July 1965, including those secret crossborder operations. Their first fatality wasn’t even from enemy fire. A soldier was gored by an elephant. That’s Borneo for you. Two squadron followed in January 1966, running 45 patrols on both sides of the border.

 Two more soldiers died when they drowned during a river crossing in the swollen jungle waterways. The jungle was trying to kill them before the Indonesians even got [music] the chance. But the regiment proved something critical in those operations. A handful of men operating with patience, discipline, and near total stealth could cross an international border, gather intelligence on enemy positions, and get out without anyone ever knowing they’d been there.

 That’s a capability that changes the entire equation of how wars are fought. The Australian government denied these Borneo operations happened for decades. The men who ran them went home and said nothing. That silence would become a defining trait of the regiment. Those lessons forged in the Borneo jungles would change everything that happened next.

 When the first SAS squadron rotated into Vietnam in 1966, the US forces were fighting a very different kind of war. The US approach was built around search and destroy. Large formations swept through the jungle, trying to find the Vietkong and pin them down long enough to call in overwhelming firepower. It works sometimes, but one US military study found that 88% of all engagements were initiated by the enemy.

 The Americans were almost always reacting, never dictating. The Australians operated on the opposite principle entirely. SAS patrols went out in groups of four to six men. They moved through the jungle of Fuak Tui Province so slowly and quietly that they could hear the VC coming long before the VC heard them. Some patrols covered less than a kilometer in an entire day.

 Every step deliberate, every broken twig a potential death sentence. When they set an ambush, it was devastating. The patrol would identify a Vietkong trail and set up a killing zone. When the enemy walked into it, every man opened fire simultaneously. The sustained burst from six automatic weapons simulated a force 10 times their size.

 By the time the VC figured out what was happening, the Australians were already gone. Extraction helicopters from number nine squadron RAF would scream and at treetop level and yank the patrol out before the VC could mount a pursuit. The Viaong started calling them marang, phantoms of the jungle.

 Capture documents later revealed that Vietong commanders issued specific warnings about Australian SAS patrols because their fighters were genuinely terrified of walking into one of those ambushes. And the Australians kept evolving. After 5 years of SAS operations, the Viaong finally figured out the helicopter insert insertion technique and started firing on patrols the moment they landed.

 So the Australians invented what they called cowboy insertions. Two helicopters would fly in together. Both patrols would jump out and move together for 5 minutes. Then the second patrol would stop, wait, and walk back to the landing zone for extraction. The real patrol continued the mission. The Vietkong never knew which helicopter drop was real and which was a decoy.

That kind of tactical adaptation happening in real time on the ground is what separated the Australian SAS from everyone else in Vietnam. The numbers backed up the the nickname. Over 6 years, the Australian and New Zealand SAS conducted nearly 1,200 patrols. They killed 492 confirmed enemy fighters. Their own combat losses, one killed in action.

 One died of wounds, 28 wounded, a kill ratio exceeding 30 to1 from about 580 men total. The Americans noticed US longrange reconnaissance patrol personnel from the 101st first airborne started uh embedding with Australian SAS patrols to learn their methods. The Australians also helped instruct at the MACV Ricondo School.

 But something strange happened. The Americans would go back to their units, try to implement what they had learned, and it would not work the same way. The problem was not the tactics. The problem was the culture behind them. The Australian SAS built their entire system around small team autonomy. A fiveman patrol made its own decisions.

 No radio call back to a colonel asking permission to engage. A captured Vietkong fighter later put it simply. The Australians were more patient, better at ambushes. They preferred to stay and fight rather than calling in air strikes. And the Vietkong were more afraid of their style. That assessment coming from the enemy tells you everything.

 But Vietnam was just the beginning. Fast forward to March 2002. The mountains of eastern Afghanistan, Operation Anaconda. This was supposed to be a three-day operation to crush what was left of al-Qaeda in the Sha Ecat Valley, a natural fortress at 8,000 ft. Intelligence said a few hundred fighters were holed up inside. Almost immediately, everything went wrong.

 The Afghan militia meant to drive into the valley never made it. The enemy strength turned out to be between 700 and a thousand fighters with mortars, heavy machine guns, RPGs, and artillery. They were dug into positions the Soviets had failed to take 20 years earlier. Australian SAS patrols were operating on the ridgeel lines above the valley.

Signalman Martin Wallace’s team was inserted directly into what turned out to be the vicinity of the al-Qaeda command post. The moment they landed, an RPG stre toward them from 300 m away. Wallace and his team sprinted for cover as mortar rounds started falling. For the next 18 hours, a handful of Australian soldiers directed precision air strikes onto al-Qaeda positions while being hammered with everything the enemy had.

 Wallace later said he thought he was going to die multiple times that day. When Apache helicopters tried to provide support, the entire hillside opened up with small arms fire. The Apaches had to pull back. It was not until Wallace guided in an AC130 gunship that the pressure eased enough for extraction. Australian SAS patrols directed air power onto enemy targets around the clock for over a week, saving the lives of American soldiers fighting in the valley below.

The action earned a distinguished service cross and a US Silver Star. Nobody called it a Sunday stroll. One year later, on the night of March 19th, 2003, a column of heavily armed six- wheeled patrol vehicles roared across the Jordanian border into western Iraq. The Australian SAS was among the first coalition forces to enter the country.

The Western Desert of Iraq had been carved up between three [music] special forces units. The US fifth special forces group took one sector, the British SAS took another, and the Australians got the third. Three nations, three of the best special operations forces on the planet, each handed a stretch of desert to control.

BNC troops drove 30 kilometers into the desert before engaging in one of the first actions of the entire war. A third troop was inserted by US Army MH47 e- helicopters with their vehicles over 600 km from Jordan. That helicopter inserted troop became for several days the closest coalition element to Baghdad.

While the world watched shock and awe on television, a small group of Australians in patrol vehicles was sitting deeper inside Iraq than any other Allied force. Patrol commander Nev Bonner later described the moment the squadron lined up on the border in the pre-dawn darkness. The officer commanding made a final radio check with headquarters, [music] then broke silence with a single word, go.

 The vehicles roared to life, and the Australians drove into Iraq to start a war. They drove in heavy long range patrol vehicles, six- wheeled Land Rover parentes mounted with 50 caliber Browning machine guns, MAG 58 machine guns, and Javelin anti-tank missiles. When Iraqi soldiers tried to engage them with machine guns on four-wheel drives, the Australians fought running battles across the open desert.

 This was not stealth. [music] This was controlled aggression from a force that had spent decades perfecting desert operations in the vast Australian outback. [music] On April 16th, the SAS captured Al-Assad air base 200 km northwest of Baghdad. Inside they found over 50 fighter aircraft including MIG 25 Fox bats, many still airworthy.

 They found nearly 8 million kilograms of explosives, an entire air force hidden from coalition bombing. When American forces arrived to take over, they inherited what would become the biggest US air base in Iraq. About 100 Australians had handed them a fully operational military installation. The SAS lost not single soldier during the taking of Iraq.

 5 years later in Urasan province, Afghanistan, the SAS faced their most brutal test since Vietnam. In late August 2008, a combined force of Australian SAS and American special forces launched a series of ambush patrols from a forward operating base called Anaconda. The first day went perfectly. Australian snipers spotted three Taliban fighters organizing an attack and neutralized all three from distance.

 When more Taliban arrived to collect the dead, the Americans destroyed their vehicle with a volley of 40mm grenades. 11 enemy killed. Zero coalition casualties. They went back to base feeling confident. The next day, September 2nd, they pushed into a valley near Ana Klay. Two SAS patrols set up in the foothills with sniper rifles while five Humvees moved through the valley to draw out Taliban fighters.

 The convoy had to move in daylight because Afghan troops had not been issued night vision equipment. Driving five vehicles into a narrow valley in broad daylight is not how special forces prefer to operate. The Taliban did not just respond. They flooded the valley. The convoy was suddenly taking fire from every direction.

 rocket propelled grenades, machine guns, mortars. The ambush had been reversed. Sergeant Troy Simmons was the forward SAS patrol commander embedded with the convoy. During the fighting, he was shot in the leg by a ricochet. Then a rocket propelled grenade exploded nearby. Then he was shot through the back of his hat. His rifle was destroyed by a bullet.

 And then he was shot through the hips. Simmons kept directing his patrol. During the withdrawal, unable to climb onto a vehicle, he threw himself into the gap between the bullbar and the front of a Humvey. Still taking fire, he wrapped a heavy chain around his head for protection. He still carries a Taliban bullet in his pelvis.

 The battle lasted 9 hours. Nine Australians wounded, one American killed, an estimated 80 Taliban dead. Only one member of Simmons’s fiveman patrol walked away unwounded. Trooper Mark Donaldson earned the Victoria Cross for Australia, the first awarded to an Australian in nearly 40 years. So, how does a regiment of roughly 600 soldiers operating from a suburban base in Perth consistently punch this far above their weight? It isn’t equipment.

 The Americans have better equipment. It isn’t budget. Australia’s defense spending wouldn’t cover a rounding error in Pentagon accounts. It comes down to selection for character over physical ability. The Special Air Service wants the soldier who can think clearly when everything has gone wrong. The 21 days at Bendon aren’t designed to find athletes.

 They’re designed to find people who refuse to quit. It comes down to small team culture. Every tactic the regiment uses is built around the assumption that you will be outnumbered, outgunned, and operating without support. When that’s your starting point, you develop a very different kind of soldier. And it comes down to institutional memory that can’t be copied. Borneo informed Vietnam.

 Vietnam informed counterterrorism. Counterterrorism informed East Tyour. East T-our informed Afghanistan and Iraq. Every generation inherits decades of accumulated knowledge about how to fight outnumbered and win. The regiment has lost 48 soldiers during operations and training since its formation. More than 200 have been wounded.

 Their names are recorded on a piece of granite outside Campbell Barracks in Swanborn. They call it the rock. The men who walk past it every day don’t talk much about what they’ve done. They don’t seek recognition. They don’t write books. That’s always been the regiment’s way. But the soldiers who fought beside them know the Americans who watched a fiveman patrol hold a rgeline and shot no.

 The commanders who saw a hundred Australians capture an air base full of fighter jets. No, who dares wins. The Australians took that motto and made it their own. Not through daring alone, through patience, through stealth, through the quiet, stubborn refusal to be anything less than the best at what they do.

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