Interesting Visit

The just-concluded three-day visit to India by US Army Gen Richard D Clarke, Commander United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and his officially acknowledged meeting with the Indian Army’s Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane, gives us several pointers about this little-noticed visit.

Firstly, the US SOCOM Commander does not have direct Indian counterpart as yet. Consequently, as the commander of all special operations forces of the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force and the US Marine Corps, he surely would have liked to have interacted with the Indian Air Force’s Chief of the Air Staff and the Indian Navy’s Chief of the Naval Staff in order to familiarise/update himself with the activities of the GARUD and MARCOS special operations forces. But since such meetings did not take place and his official interaction was only with the IA’s COAS, this can only mean that Gen Clarke’s visit was confined to interactions only with the land forces special operations formations, i.e. the IA’s Para (Special Forces) and the IA-commanded but R & AW-owned Special Frontier Forces (SFF).

Obviously the US SOCOM would like to keep abreast of the recent experiences of the Para (SF) and SFF as a result of high-altitude deployments all along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) since mid-2020, even though the US SOCOM has no intention of ever deploying for combat at such forbidding heights. But it is also highly likely that Gen Clarke was briefed about the urgent hardware requirements of both the IA and the SFF, especially for equipment like light all-terrain tracked vehicles, exoskeletons and fuel cell-powered manportable SATCOM gear. It is also highly probable that the IA has asked for similar hardware on behalf of the Royal Bhutan Army.