Special forces to hit key enemy infra during war

New Delhi: India has initiated the process of setting up a tri-services Armed Forces Special Operations Division by appointing Maj. Gen. A.K. Dhingra as its first chief.

Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta will head the new Defence Cyber Agency. It is expected that Air Vice-Marshal S.P. Dharkar will head the Defence Space Agency.

Armed Forces Special Operations Division (AFSOD) will have about 3,000 commandos.

These will be derived from special forces of the Army, Marine Commandos (Marcos) of the Navy and Garuda commando force of the IAF.

These special forces will be mostly used during war times to hit and cripple enemy’s key infrastructure and anti-terrorists operations. It will be a specialised force as it will draw from the expertise of all the three services — Army, Navy and Air Force.

It will be on the line of the US Special Operations Command, which was responsible for taking out Osama Bin Laden.

The new division will work under the tri-services Integrated Defence Staff.

Maj. Gen. Dhingra will have the responsibility to set up the structure of the new division. The unit is likely to have its own specialised weapons, equipment, helicopters, transport planes, surveillance equipment for carrying out strategic missions. Its headquarters could be set up either in Agra and Bengaluru.

The proposal to set up the three agencies was given final approval by PM Narendra Modi at the Combined Commanders’ Conference last year

Maj. Gen. Dhingra is a Special Forces veteran and is from the elite 1 Para Special Forces Regiment, and has seen real combat from close quarters.

In 2012, the Naresh Chandra Committee had recommended setting up three commands — Special Operations, Cyber and Space — to deal with new challenges facing national security.