Spear Corps CISF training got under way on Monday at the Agartala Military Station, where the Indian Army's Spear Corps opened a two-week course for the Central Industrial Security Force personnel who guard the Maharaja Bir Bikram (MBB) Airport in Agartala. The course, which began on 27 July, runs under the Military-Civil Fusion framework, and is meant to tighten how the two forces work together to hold the airfield.

It will run for 14 days. Army instructors are leading the modules, and the CISF personnel taking part go back to their airport duties once the course ends.


What the Spear Corps CISF training covers

The syllabus stays close to the threats an airport actually faces. Instruction spans industrial and critical infrastructure security, vital area and vital point security, quick reaction team drills, and counter-drone operations and threat mitigation, alongside other current practices for guarding sensitive installations. The organisers said modern security challenges "demand a seamless and integrated response from all security agencies", the reasoning behind putting soldiers and aviation-security staff through the same drills.

Counter-drone drills and quick reaction teams

Two of those modules track how airfield threats have shifted. Small drones near a perimeter, and the need for a fast rehearsed response, now sit beside older tasks like access control. The CISF has been training its personnel in drone and counter-drone work force-wide, and brings that to the course.

Why the Army runs this course in Tripura

Spear Corps is the Indian Army's III Corps, headquartered at Rangapahar in Dimapur and part of Eastern Command, with an area of responsibility that runs across the Northeast and takes in Tripura. Its formations are a familiar presence in the region, seen in tasks that range from counter-insurgency to flood relief in Assam. Running a security course for the force that guards Agartala's airport falls within that same footprint.

Military-Civil Fusion and the CAPF partnership

The programme is being read as part of the Army's wider work on capacity building and operational synergy with the Central Armed Police Forces. The Spear Corps CISF training pairs the Army's tactical experience with the CISF's specialised aviation-security mandate, the force that also runs deployments as varied as the metro, industrial units and, in July, the Amarnath Yatra security review at Nunwan. Airport security itself is held to the civil aviation security standards set nationally, which the CISF applies on the ground.

MBB Airport on the Northeast security map

MBB Airport is Tripura's main air gateway and, after the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport at Guwahati, the second busiest in the Northeast. The CISF secures most of the region's airports, MBB among them. Once the two weeks are done, the trained personnel return to the terminal and the perimeter at Agartala, which the Airports Authority of India operates.