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I have just finished reading 'The British Officer' by Antony Clayton, who was a senior lecturer at Sandhurst (also a Lt Colonel in the TA).

On page 245 it states that:

"in 2003 a women officer successfully completed the extremely testing Special Forces selection course, the first women to do so"

Is this correct??

At first I thought he might have mistaken Capt. Tattersall (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2017213.stm) as the women officer.

But surely as a senior lecturer at RMAS, he would know the AACC is no where nearly as challenging as the UKSF selection!

I've never heard of it. You mention he was TA, was he referring to regular or reserve selection? Also quite possible that she 'passed' in the same way as our Pip, with a leg up here and a time extension there. On the other hand, she may have done it.

My immediate reaction is, why bother? It costs a stupid amount of money to put someone through Selection, why do it if they person is unemployable in the role afterwards? Selection also requires a high degree of infantry skill, which would be difficult for a woman to obtain (tho not impossible, highlighted by the fact that some from non-infantry arms do pass after attending pre-courses to bring them up to speed). Finally, remember the media hype around Pip? You'd think a similar thing would occur, although obviously it may not have been made public for obvious reasons...which brings me back to the point of why bother? If there's not even any PR in it?

Not to say it's not true of course, but I'd like to hear the reasoning behind it

do a search on "Rachel Kelsey sas" but just dont belive all the articles The women on the course had less weight and different times and only got so far on the hills phase but give her credit she got further than alot of blokes do.

There are women in the SRR...
I don't know what the selection is like, but I do know that there was a recruiting drive last year when I was nearing the end of my language course.

As Hypers says there are women in SRR, they (as in SRR candidates) do the first two weeks of the Hills (up to the Fan-Dance), not sure how times relate to SF (although as the Fan Dance is the first pass-or-fail, presumably it would only apply to this). SRR are now fully paid up members of the SF group, but their Selection is completely different beyond these two weeks (as are their taskings - hence women can apply).