The army’s newly raised, combat-ready commando unit, the Bhairav Battalions, made its first public appearance on a Jaipur street on Thursday at the 78th Army Day parade, the first time the event was held in public and outside cantonments.

Hundreds lined Mahal Road to watch the march past and military display, the fourth time it was being hosted outside Delhi, after editions in Bengaluru, Pune and Lucknow.

The Bhairav Battalions — light commando units formed to bridge the gap between the regular infantry and Para Special Forces — were the cynosure of the parade. Each of the 15 battalions raised has 200 to 250 soldiers capable of high-tech combat and fast reaction, and the army plans to form another 15-20 battalions.

Unlike the Para Special Forces, which carry out strategic covert missions deep inside enemy territory, the Bhairav battalions — positioned close to the border — will handle tactical, fast-breaking situations that require immediate response rather than detailed planning.

“They are small and tight units capable of moving fast and acting independently. They are a ready-to-move unit for border situations on short notice,” an army official said.

“They have been raised to ‘fight tonight’, often without waiting for larger formations, to respond to the realities of fast-moving and technology-driven warfare. They will be deployed for multi-domain tasks: a mix of ground action, drone operations and electronic support.”

The Bhairav battalions’ soldiers are drawn from existing infantry regiments but trained specifically for hybrid warfare.

In their first public appearance, they came out with “their feet thumping the concrete”, in the words of an army officer, and shouting the battalion’s war cry with paint on their faces.

Terming the Bhairav a “lean and mean” force, the defence ministry said it represented India’s resolve to “fight smarter and strike faster”.

Sources said the battalions were raised last year after the army brass reviewed lessons from recent global conflicts including Operation Sindoor. They underscored that large, traditional battalions cannot always respond quickly enough to emerging threats along the frontiers.

The Bhairav battalions had demonstrated their capabilities during field exercises held in 2025 and 2026, they added.

Several other units, including the Garhwal Scouts, Sikkim Scouts and Arunachal Scouts, also marched past in full gear at the parade.

The army demonstrated its advanced capabilities, with robot dogs and all-terrain vehicles preceding the BrahMos missile, India’s indigenous, long-range supersonic missile, in the parade.

The Nepal Army Band was one of the military bands participating, “reflecting the deep-rooted bonds of friendship, mutual trust and shared military traditions between the two armies”, a defence ministry statement said.

The army chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, reaffirmed that technology was meant to empower the soldiers, not to replace them.

He said the army was strengthening dual-use infrastructure and innovation and that the coming years would focus on networking and data-centricity to improve connectivity, information flow and decision-making.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh and senior defence officials were on the dais.