http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/NAVY/Marines.html U can find info about the marcos.. here

1. Paras work behind lines so they automatically qualify in some sense as US 82nd Air Assault does. 2. I didnt mention RR b/c they are COIN defensive, i.e they dont operate behind lines. 3. Para Cdo. are India's primary SF; which was what I meant in broad Para. category 4. I used Guards as a counter position to Paras, not as SF. Being in guards does not preculde bing SF however; I dont know specifics in Indian case, but many Royal Marine SBS officers are regularly offered position in Coldstream and Grenadier Guards and since Brig of Guards in India was modeled on that precept I would assume F. Marshal Cariappa would have included that provision too seeing he was himself comissioned in Kumoun and served in Coldstream. 5. Lots of other Indian Infantry Regiments have SF components as do Pakistanis; 5th Gurkha is Indian Special Frontier Force (formerly Indo-Tibetian Border Police ppl too were part of it), other regiments provide many members of Special Service Bureau, Assam Reg. provides ppl for a specilized Jungle Combat unit. What I really meant in my response to Herc is that Indians are more conventional in their SF roles, and prefer to hand out operations to the regular Infantry regiments that perform work close to the work needed, and really there is nothing wrong with it as a general, unifying policy but you dont want to make Gurkhas swim against SEALs or PARA Cdos. climb against SAS. And yes I did know of MARCOS and even a rudimentary check into their history will reveal their infantry origins vs. naval/marine origins of SEALS and SBS. But that has not and really should not affect them in their current duties... but I really dont think they are up to standards set up by Italians or SBS in water work.

Historically the best instances of SF work was done by poorly armed peasant partisans led by school-teachers with no military background... and that is where toughness and equipment fail and political assets come into play: You all have seen Lawrence of Arabia... a man with no military discipline leads a rag-tag bunch of Arabs into victory after victory against a foe the Brits were unable to fight because of geography and limited resources... all on a promised political agenda for the Arabs. And more widely read among you will know that the last two real European empires were all gotten on SF type work... Clive wasnt particulary tough or sophisticated but had a political (and commerical) agenda. Pizarro wasnt given Castille's best soldiers, he got out with its most expendable i.e those who were least able to fight the Muslims and later Dutch but had a political (and religious) agenda. ... Leninist and Maoists who then went on to produce two challenging superpowers were both centered on a revolutionary core that relied on peasants for toughness and semi-literates for equipment. But the guiding force was still poltical. Hence I put a high premium on the POWER PROJECTED by SF with a political ideology to support their toughness and equipment. Also democracies are inherently the best equiped for the political objective, and least equiped for toughness and equipment:- among most establised ruling blocks in democracies SF work is seen as something of a bizarre and threatening phenomenon (the left sees it as a killing machine devoid of soul, right thinks of it as an undemocratic threat to the republican establishment: that is until they get to power and use it as they wish)

>>>Malaya, Vietnam, GW1 and GW2, Afghanistan and Timor were all pretty much officially sanctioned work that used allied assets and more importantly liberally distributed dollars.<<< How were we helped at all in Timor, especially in the early months where the UN were still talking so we said stuff em and did the job ourselves, and our SAS, 4RAR, and Navy CDT's were reportedly in Timor weeks before anybody knew about it, they sure didnt get any outside help. Timor was very much a one man show, we didnt get much help from anybody until late in the game. East Timor was a fully Aussie operation, just because the UN tries to put their own spin on it doesn't mean they helped do ANY of the hard work.

Sorry matey, you're wrong here. I can personally attest to seeing SBS, Irish Rangers, Italian sailors, Portuguese sailors etc.. At one stage there were 13 other countries involved. Darwin Harbour looked like a PanPac venue. They may not have been in there early, but they were there later on. The SBS were there from day 1. of Dilli airport being secured. In fact the common media mistake is to tag them as SAS.

Come to think of it, when blokes were getting out of the Hercs, some carried SA80's, not Steyr F88. That figures that some came along for the ride.

yes I know that there were other nations present, but in no way did they support us logistically or provide absolutely vital help. for PP to say we could not have done it independently is cr@p, because we owned that thing, small foreign involvments were a big help, but they were not needed to carry the op out. Its not like the whole mission rested on a few dozen SBS folks or some purteguse ships, if anybody needed help there it was them, we hosted and ran that shindig, and we were the ones in the skirmishes along the west timor border and fighting the militia throughout the province. The Aus SAS, and our other units are perfectly capable of operating independently, and that has been shown.

Spetznaz are very good, but the SASR are probably second or third best in the world, behind the SAS and FFL. Where is Israel? They have some of the most capable SOF in the world, probably around 6 or 7 in the world

"yes I know that there were other nations present, but in no way did they support us logistically or provide absolutely vital help. for PP to say we could not have done it independently is cr@p, because we owned that thing, small foreign involvments were a big help, but they were not needed to carry the op out. Its not like the whole mission rested on a few dozen SBS folks or some purteguse ships, if anybody needed help there it was them, we hosted and ran that shindig, and we were the ones in the skirmishes along the west timor border and fighting the militia throughout the province. The Aus SAS, and our other units are perfectly capable of operating independently, and that has been shown." I'd actually contest that, the support that the SBS, NS-SAS, Irish Rangers, Ghurkas provided was invaluable. And you can't write off logistics, the Italians, Portuguese, - it was a critical component. As for the Op not being dependant on them for critical leverage etc... it would be a pretty ferkin useless force commander who hadn't designed a plan around redundancy of force and redundancy of capability. The other specwarries that were in the field were just as vital to the success of the op as every skip in "theatre". East Timor if anything hilighted weaknesses in deployment factors that we were able to take back and do some serious navel gazing about how it could have been done better. Dismissing the contribution of other nations is not only unfair, but also fails to recognise contributions made which don't get into the public domain - as they shouldn't. Actually the logistics was a shemozzle, and if it wasn't for some of our coalition partners it could have been a lot uglier. The stories of "force contribution" gear being unloaded in a seamless fashion are good media spin, but in reality are absolute crap. Yes, IMV we did something right and noble (it's a somewhat lost and archaic descriptor, but is appropriate here), but it wasn't a walk in the park. Excellent field craft and training made up for some basic deficiencies. Other nations support although unsung, was badly needed and timely and approp in it's contribution. Just a few numbers for you to consider: There were more than 5000 Australian Defence Force personnel, as well as approx 4500 personnel from 21 other coalition partners: Brazil, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Fiji, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand and the United States. They weren't all loggies, box cutters, REMFs and sailors. ;)

Are those 'combat box-cutters'? smirk. I would have thought they were REMF's as well ;) Fugazi!! .