Abingdonboy
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Very, very nice!http://www.dailypioneer.com/todays-newspaper/india-set-to--give-sock--to-terror.html
INDIA SET TO GIVE SOC(K) TO TERROR
Sunday, 13 July 2014 | Rahul Datta | New Delhi
The Government is likely to give the go-ahead for setting up a Special Operations Command (SOC) to counter terrorism and conduct unconventional warfare and covert operations in the country and the neighbourhood. The Defence Ministry has approved the SOC in principle and the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), chaired by the Prime Minister, will take the final call shortly.
Headed by a Lieutenant-General, the proposed command will report to the National Security Advisor (NSA) and Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and will work closely with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) as the commandos may have to carry out strategic strikes outside Indian boundaries.
It will be somewhat patterned on the lines of the US Special Operations Command, which took out Osama Bin Laden in its Abbottabad operation, and is engaged in “war on terror”. The US Command works in tandem with the CIA, which gives the crucial Intelligence inputs in war zones of Afghanistan and other parts of the world. It did so even during the Iraq campaign.
Based on the real time Intelligence, the Navy SEAL and Green Beret commandos of the US have carried out several known and many clandestine operations in Afghanistan and Africa. While strategic strikes in Afghanistan were against the Taliban, targeted “killings” in Africa were against the Al Qaeda.
The 14-member Naresh Chandra Taskforce on National Security in its recommendations submitted to the Prime Minister in 2012 had suggested setting up three commands, including Special Operations, Cyber and Aerospace, to keep abreast with the fast changing nature of war fighting.
The proposal to have the Special Operations Command gathered momentum after Army Chief General Bikram Singh, who is also Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, gave a detailed presentation about it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, sources said here on Saturday.
The three Services have already done the ground work and submitted the plan for raising the new Command to the Defence Ministry some months back but the general elections delayed the process as the then UPA Government did not want to take a major policy decision of this nature towards the fag end of its tenure, officials said.
The Prime Minister will meet the three Services chiefs later this month to review the SOC proposal before discussing it in the CCS, sources said. Modi has already decided to interact with the chiefs every month to gain first-hand knowledge about operational preparedness and problems faced by the Armed Forces including slow pace of modernisation.
Batches of commandos of Special Forces of the Army, Marine Commandos (MARCOS) of the Navy and Garud of IAF will be integrated to deal with “out of area” contingencies like warding off any threat to remote islands in Andaman & Nicobar and other such regions in the Indian Ocean.
Phase-I of setting up the SOC will involve an amalgamation of manpower and assets of the three Services. Phase-II will see modifications in standard operating procedures (SOPs), once the Command gets operational, sources said. While the three Services have agreed to have such a command for effective response to any threat without losing time, they will continue to operate in their assigned domains, officials said.
Elaborating upon it, officials said the Special Forces of the Army will continue to carry out anti-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations in Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East besides specialised tasks.
At present, the Special Forces have eight battalions (one battalion has 1,000 men) and they have vast experience of operating in jungles of the North-East, Jammu & Kashmir and as part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka.
The one battalion strong MARCOS, raised in the early 1980s, is engaged in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. A small detachment is engaged in counter-terrorism in Kashmir and deployed at Wular Lake near Srinagar. Its commandos came to limelight for the first time when they took on terrorists for the first few hours after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. MARCOS also took part in some operations during the IPKF deployment in Sri Lanka.
With a view to guarding its airfields and assets like state-of-the-art fighter jets and other sensitive equipment, the IAF raised Garud Commando Force five years back. While the role of these commandos is more or less static, the SOC may see them playing a bigger role, sources said.
Once the Command gets going, the three Services propose to gradually withdraw their commandos and favour the new set-up to have its own trained manpower, sources said. However, the Government may not agree as raising a new force will require huge funds. The Government may opt for a small but effective and flexible SOC with commandos from Army, Navy and IAF serving short tenures before returning to their parent organisations, officials said.
As for the command structure of the SOC, a Lt-General will head it and equivalent rank officers from IAF and Navy will head the Space and Cyber Commands. Given the expertise in commando operations, the Army will head the SOC while Space Command will have an IAF officer as chief while a Navy officer will be at the helm of the Cyber Command, they said.
India set to give SOC(K) to terror
Would like some clarity on exactly what the SOC will be charged with, its budget and composition. From the article it seems to suggest that at any one time only a small number of operators from the IA,IAF and IN will be under the SOC. My understanding was all SOFs of the IA,IN and IAF would be under the SOC at any one time. The article also makes out that the SOC will be a new force in itself but that makes no sense.
A good start, will be monitoring this very closely, as the command matures I am looking foreword to assets, experience and deployments they accumulate.
