Zarvan
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India's Special Forces Remain Underdeveloped and Underequipped
The Editors Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Last month, Indian special operations forcesconducted a brief raid into Myanmar looking for militants. In an email interview, Iskander Rehman, a nonresident fellow at the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, discussed India’s special operations forces.
WPR: How developed are India’s special operations forces, and what are their principal capabilities?
Iskander Rehman: That’s a difficult question to answer, in part because some of India’s special operations forces (SOF) units may bear a closer resemblance to what Western military analysts would consider to be elite and/or specialized infantry than to special operators.
Within the Indian army, for example, there are currently about 13 parachute or Para battalions,with plans for further expansion. Only a select number of these units are airborne, and many of the existing battalions are suffering from equipment and officer shortfalls. The Indian army also has Ghatak Army platoons, which are trained to act as the heavily armed spearheads or shock troops in the event of a large-scale ground assault.
As I’ve discussed elsewhere, there is not yet a Joint Special Forces Command in India, despite a widespread recognition of its utility. As a result, there is a tendency toward duplication, as well as a habit of viewing these units through a rather narrow, tactical lens. Each service of India’s armed forces possesses its own special forces component. The navy has the 2,000 strong Marine Commandoes or MARCOS, an amphibious warfare unit modeled on the U.S. Navy Seals, while the Indian air force established its own small SOF unit, the Garud, in 2003.
In addition to the military SOF units, there are a number of other elite forces that fall under the under the purview of the Home Ministry or the Cabinet Secretariat, such as the National Security Guards (NSG) and the Special Protection Group (SPG). Following the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, India also set up a 10,000-strong unit called the Special Frontier Force (SFF), or Establishment 22. Composed of ethnic Tibetans and modeled on the U.S. Army’s Green Berets, they were trained to operate deep behind Chinese lines in the Tibetan autonomous region. This unit still exists, although it remains unclear whether it has preserved its elite status.
WPR: How prominently do special forces feature in India’s tactical and strategic culture, and what kinds of operations have they historically been used for?
Rehman: India has a rich history with regard to special warfare. Since independence, India’s special operators have played important roles in Tibet, during the period that India actively supported guerrilla movements, as well as in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Establishment 22, for example, played an important role training and fighting alongside the Mukti Bahini, Bangladesh’s resistance forces, during Bangladesh’s war for independence in 1971.
With regard to what military analysts term direct action, however, the record is slimmer, which is why there was so much commentary last month following the raid into Myanmar. As several commentators have rightly noted, the success of this operation should not obscure the fact that it would remain very difficult for India, at least for now, to mount a Zero Dark Thirty-type mission against state-backed terrorist actors in Pakistan. One of the keys to the success of this particular operation, after all, was Myanmar’s cooperation.
Finally, it is well-known in the global SOF community that India’s elite troops possess certain pockets of excellence, such as jungle warfare and high-altitude operations.
WPR: How has their role evolved in the past decade, and how might that change moving forward?
Rehman: Perhaps the greatest driver of change in India’s approach to its SOF occurred in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attack. Thelackluster response of India’s security forces, and the delay in supplying the Delhi-based National Security Guards with dedicated air transport, led to the death of many more innocent civilians at the hands of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Since then, India has engaged in a major overhaul of its internal security apparatus, andthere are now NSG hubs in every major Indian city. A lot of these changes, however, have focused on improving India’s ability to respond to internal contingencies. While this is understandable, there is an urgent need for India’s security managers to focus an equal degree of attention on the role Indian SOF could play vis-a-vis the nation’s external security challenges.
Over the past few months, I have interviewed over 20 serving and recently retired Indian special forces officers. All have complained about the debilitating effect chronic delays in procurement have on both the morale and effectiveness of their troops. In many cases, these delays extend to items as fundamental as parachutes and new assault and sniper rifles. Until these bureaucratic issues are addressed, India will have failed to harness its considerable SOF potential.
India's Special Forces Remain Underdeveloped and Underequipped
