Unveiled by the chief of defence staff, General Anil Chauhan and top military leaders from three Services, the joint doctrine has set out guiding principles, operational concepts and interoperability frameworks for the special forces missions.
New Delhi: The Indian Armed Forces’ Special Forces will now be tasked with a range of high-impact missions against enemy forces, according to the newly released Joint Doctrine on Special Forces. These missions include capturing enemy commanders, rescuing Indian prisoners of war and hostages, conducting air ambushes near enemy airfields, disrupting national civil and high-level military command and control systems, and striking high-value targets to cripple the enemy’s economy.
Unveiled by the chief of defence staff, General Anil Chauhan and top military leaders from three Services, the joint doctrine has set out guiding principles, operational concepts and interoperability frameworks for the special forces missions.
Known for their diversity and vital role in national security, the elite units of the armed forces are specially trained to carry out high-risk operations that require advanced skills and tactics in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments.
Among the other roles, which have been outlined in the joint doctrine, also include collection and reporting of environmental data – meteorological and hydrographic, for strike planning by aircraft, and maritime platforms.
“Special Forces can also carry out reconnaissance of essential entry points for operations, such as Combat Beach Reconnaissance (CBR) prior to an amphibious landing or reconnaissance of landing, drop zones prior to a heliborne or an airborne operation. Special Forces can reach and communicate with civilians and indigenous forces to gather information,” the joint doctrine says.
At the operational level, the troops could acquire targets of significance to the Commander to support plans and trigger interdiction.
The doctrine also emphasize the troops to carry out post-strike damage assessment, including damage inflicted by own weapon systems on targets of strategic or operational significance for ascertaining requirement of repeat targeting.
In Low Intensity Conflict Operations (LICO) environment, the Special Forces can operate for protracted periods in hostile territory to conduct a succession of offensive actions, including sabotage against key enemy installations, communications and vital supplies.
In Unconventional Warfare, the Special Forces, due to their unique skills which include ability to operate independently in small teams for prolonged durations and linguistic, cultural orientation are suited for covert military operations.
Since they are primarily employed to engage the critical targets, the joint doctrine have also laid down few of strategic and tactical objectives for the Special Forces.
Strategic Objectives:–
Capability to strike deep at enemy’s strategic high value targets, which will deter them from engaging in proxy war or in waging war.
Adversely affect enemy infrastructure created in support of war fighting capability.
Disrupt enemy’s national civil and higher military Command and Control (C2) systems.
Attack such high value targets which would paralyze enemy’s economy and affect his capability to continue waging war.
Operational/ Tactical Objectives:–
The doctrine also emphasized the troops to expose enemy’s deception plans, isolate enemy military commanders from their forces, degrade enemy air defence control & reporting (C&R) systems, degrade or destroy operational level C2 systems and destroy critical logistics installations.
“To minimize duplication and enhance effectiveness, they can be trained jointly on advanced skills. Existing Special Forces Training Schools of three Services need to be upgraded to Joint Service Training Institutes (JSTIs).
“This can be done without transferring the command and control from lead service and by optimizing existing infrastructure with assets and resources from all the Services.”