The British Army's SAS--the Special Air Service--is recognized as one of the world's premier special operations units. During the Gulf War, deep behind Iraqi lines, an SAS team was compromised. A fierce firefight ensued, and the eight men were forced to run for their lives. Only one, Chris Ryan, escaped capture--by walking nearly 180 miles through the desert for a week. The One That Got Away is his breathtaking story of extraordinary courage under fire, of narrow escapes, of highly trained soldiers struggling against the most adverse of conditions, and, above all, of one man's courageous refusal to lie down and die.
When the beautiful 20-year-old daughter of a Moldovan businessman goes missing from her university, British Intelligence will do anything in its power to track her down. Only one man is skilled and ruthless enough for the job - but for the first time in his life Nick Stone doesn't want to play ball ... Fact: On 5 September 2007, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear installation in northeastern Syria. Syrian radar - supposedly state-of-the-art - had failed to warn of the incoming assault. Fact: Unknown to anyone but the Israelis and the radar's manufacturers, the commercial, off-the-shelf microprocessors within it contained a remotely accessible kill switch. But what is the raid's mysterious connection with the missing student? What is the secret to Britain's security to which she unwittingly holds the key? And when ex-SAS deniable operator Nick Stone is tasked to find and abduct her, why is he not on 'receive'?
A classic that just keeps getting better, The Little SAS Book is essential for anyone learning SAS programming. Lora Delwiche and Susan Slaughter offer a user-friendly approach so that readers can quickly and easily learn the most commonly used features of the SAS language. Each topic is presented in a self-contained, two-page layout complete with examples and graphics. Nearly every section has been revised to ensure that the sixth edition is fully up-to-date. This edition is also interface-independent, written for all SAS programmers whether they use SAS Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide, or the SAS windowing environment. New sections have been added covering PROC SQL, iterative DO loops, DO WHILE and DO UNTIL statements, %DO statements, using variable names with special characters, the ODS EXCEL destination, and the XLSX LIBNAME engine. This title belongs on every SAS programmer's bookshelf. It's a resource not just to get you started, but one you will return to as you continue to improve your programming skills. Learn more about the updates to The Little SAS Book, Sixth Edition here. Reviews for The Little SAS Book, Sixth Edition can be read here.
British and American commanders first used modern special forces in support of conventional military operations during World War II. Since then, although special ops have featured prominently in popular culture and media coverage of wars, the academic study of irregular warfare has remained as elusive as the practitioners of special operations themselves. This book is the first comprehensive study of the development, application, and value of Anglo-American commando and special forces units during the Second World War. Special forces are intensively trained, specially selected military units performing unconventional and often high-risk missions. In this book, Andrew L. Hargreaves not only describes tactics and operations but also outlines the distinctions between commandos and special forces, traces their evolution during the war, explains how the Anglo-American alliance functioned in the creation and use of these units, looks at their command and control arrangements, evaluates their impact, and assesses their cost-effectiveness. The first real impetus for the creation of British specialist formations came in the desperate summer of 1940 when, having been pushed out of Europe following defeat in France and the Low Countries, Britain began to turn to irregular forces in an effort to wrest back the strategic initiative from the enemy. The development of special forces by the United States was also a direct consequence of defeat. After Pearl Harbor, Hargreaves shows, the Americans found themselves in much the same position as Britain had been in 1940: shocked, outnumbered, and conventionally defeated, they were unable to come to grips with the enemy on a large scale. By the end of the war, a variety of these units had overcome a multitude of evolutionary hurdles and made valuable contributions to practically every theater of operation. In describing how Britain and the United States worked independently and cooperatively to invent and put into practice a fundamentally new way of waging war, this book demonstrates the two nations’ flexibility, adaptability, and ability to innovate during World War II.
Why does SAS use January 1, 1960 as its arbitrary reference date? How do you convert a value such as 27 January 2003 into a SAS date? How do you put a date into a filename, or label an Excel worksheet with the date? You'll find the answers to these questions and much more in Derek Morgan's Essential Guide to SAS Dates and Times, Second Edition, which makes it easy to understand how to use and manipulate dates, times, and datetimes in SAS. Updated for SAS 9.4, with additional functions, formats, and capabilities, the Second Edition has a new chapter dedicated to the ISO 8601 standard and the formats and functions that are new to SAS, including how SAS works with Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). Novice users will appreciate the new "Troubleshooting" appendix, which discusses questions common to newer SAS users in a conversational way and provides clear examples of simple solutions to these questions. Both novice and intermediate users will find the clear, task-based examples on how to accomplish date-related tasks and the detailed explanations of standard formats and functions invaluable. Users working with intervals will appreciate the expanded discussion of the topic, which details the new custom interval capability, among other enhancements to intervals. Users working with international dates and times will benefit from the detailed discussion of the NLS facility as it relates to dates and times. Included are bonus "Quick Reference Guides" that list both the standard date and time formats and the NLS date and time formats with examples. These guides illustrate how each format displays the same date, time, or datetime, so you can find the format you want to use at a glance. The Essential Guide to SAS Dates and Times, Second Edition is the most complete and up-to-date collection of examples on how to write complex programs involving dates, times, or datetime values. This book is part of the SAS Press Program.
To use statistical methods and SAS applications to forecast the future values of data taken over time, you need only follow this thoroughly updated classic on the subject. With this third edition of SAS for Forecasting Time Series, intermediate-to-advanced SAS users—such as statisticians, economists, and data scientists—can now match the most sophisticated forecasting methods to the most current SAS applications. Starting with fundamentals, this new edition presents methods for modeling both univariate and multivariate data taken over time. From the well-known ARIMA models to unobserved components, methods that span the range from simple to complex are discussed and illustrated. Many of the newer methods are variations on the basic ARIMA structures. Completely updated, this new edition includes fresh, interesting business situations and data sets, and new sections on these up-to-date statistical methods: ARIMA models Vector autoregressive models Exponential smoothing models Unobserved component and state-space models Seasonal adjustment Spectral analysis Focusing on application, this guide teaches a wide range of forecasting techniques by example. The examples provide the statistical underpinnings necessary to put the methods into practice. The following up-to-date SAS applications are covered in this edition: The ARIMA procedure The AUTOREG procedure The VARMAX procedure The ESM procedure The UCM and SSM procedures The X13 procedure The SPECTRA procedure SAS Forecast Studio Each SAS application is presented with explanation of its strengths, weaknesses, and best uses. Even users of automated forecasting systems will benefit from this knowledge of what is done and why. Moreover, the accompanying examples can serve as templates that you easily adjust to fit your specific forecasting needs. This book is part of the SAS Press program.
Learn to write SAS programs quickly and efficiently. Programming in SAS is flexible, but it can also be overwhelming. Many novice and experienced programmers learn how to write programs that use the DATA step and macros, but they often don’t realize that a simpler or better way can achieve the same results. In a user-friendly tutorial style, Practical and Efficient SAS® Programming: The Insider's Guide provides general SAS programming tips that use the tools available in Base SAS, including the DATA step, the SAS macro facility, and SQL. Drawing from the author’s 30 years of SAS programming experience, this book offers self-contained sections that describe each tip or trick and present numerous examples. It therefore serves as both an easy reference for a specific question, and a useful cover-to-cover read. As a bonus, the utility programs included in the appendixes will help you simplify your programs, as well as help you develop a sleek and efficient coding style. With this book, you will learn how to do the following: use the DATA step, the SAS macro facility, SQL, and other Base SAS tools more efficiently choose the best tool for a task use lookup tables simulate recursion with macros read metadata with the DATA step create your own programming style in order to write programs that are easily maintained Using this book, SAS programmers of all levels will discover new techniques to help them write programs quickly and efficiently.
In this WW2 memoir, the author of SAS: With the Maquis continues his thrilling account of life as a British Army commando behind enemy lines. Colonel Ian Wellsted, OBE, served with the British Army’s elite Special Air Service during World War II. In this vivid personal account, he vividly recounts his involvement in Operation Archway, a mission supporting Field Marshal Montgomery’s Allied 21st Army Group in operations Varsity and Plunder. In this offensive, the SAS teams were thrust deep into German territory, often having to battle their way through enemy lines to get back to safety. ‘I quickly learned that there was no way to control an SAS battle,’ Wellsted wrote of his first major encounter in charge of a patrol. ‘The din was deafening – seventy odd Vickers and half a dozen Brownings all chattering together.’ In one of these encounters, as the war was drawing to a close, Wellsted’s troop found itself surrounded. In the ensuing firefight, Wellsted was wounded, bringing his active front line career to an end.
From its early beginnings in World War II, the Special Air Service (SAS) has won renown in some of the most dramatic, dangerous and controversial military special operations of the 20th century. It is a secretive and mysterious unit, whose operations and internal structures are hidden from the public eye. Now, one of its longest-serving veterans offers a glimpse into the shadowy world of the SAS. Rusty Firmin spent an incredible 15 years with 'The Regiment' and was a key figure in the assault of the Iranian Embassy in London in May 1980. Newly revised and available in paperback, this is the unforgettable chronicle of Rusty's combat experiences – a fascinating and intimate portrayal of what it was like to be part of the world's most respected Special Operations Force.
The true story of a legendary SAS soldier who participated in the battle of Mirbat and assaulted the Iranian Embassy to free the hostages held within. No publicity, no media. We move in silently, do our job, and melt away into the background. If you have the stamina, the willpower and the guts, we'll welcome you with open arms and make you one of us. And if you haven't, then it's been very nice knowing you. Eighteen years in the SAS saw Pete Winner, codenamed Soldier 'I', survive the savage battle of Mirbat, parachute into the icy depths of the South Atlantic at the height of the Falklands War, and storm the Iranian Embassy during the most famous hostage crisis in the modern world. For the first time Pete also details his close-protection work around the world, from the lawless streets of Moscow to escorting aid convoys into war-torn Bosnia. He also unveils the problems of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder faced by many Special Forces veterans, and how he battled his own demons to continue his roller-coaster career. This is his story, written with a breathtaking take-no-prisoners attitude that brings each death-defying episode vividly to life.
