lets talk about an joint op conducted by paras and infantry and the challenges they faced then and now are pretty much the same
To sum up the Jaffna university helidrop.....
The whole op was a major fuckup which was majorly due to the senior IA officers who did not considering the para sf officer observations .It was a joint op by Paras and Sikh Li but after the botched up helidrop and coming under heavy fire Paras decided to move and the Sikh li officer wanted to stay at the LZ hoping for additional men which never came .The SikhLI officer refused to cooperate with the paras and wanted to follow the og plan setup by the high commands , finally the paras and the Sikhs had to part their ways . Despite that they were able to fight back despite no support aside from a small mortar team of SA engineers and had minimum casualties till the cavalry arrived .Sikh Li didn't make it out alive out of the op..
To sum it up
1. Senior IA officers have always treated Paras badly and the situation today is due to the same attitude.
they do not listen to others ....................( why do you think they will ever listen to us civilians?)
2. Equipment (small arms) were always an issue , there is an instance when they had to abandon their Stens as they were proving to be ineffective and had to scavenge a G3 from a dead fighter.
3. Regular infantry and special forces rarely get along as they operate very differently , paras chose to accept the situation and adapt accordingly whereas the infantry always tries to follow the orders of officers to the word. this still happens today and thus sf tends to operate in their own groups ..... which backfires at times.
4. Para Sfs night fighting capabilities and other capabilities in general were not always bad , they were up to the global standards during the Jaffna University helidrop but they were not able to keep up...
disclaimer ------ Everything written is from my memory of a book I red many years ago so please understand . If there is anything wrongly mentioned please correct me ..