As the PARUs were supposed to fight guerrilla warfare along border areas where roads were mostly non-existent, they were trained to be parachute jumpers, and operated in small five-man or ten-man teams. Moreover, they were trained to handle and operate all kinds of light weapons, mortars and explosives. The PARUs were retrained regularly and were kept on alert status they were thus prepared to leave for combat as soon as they were given orders to do so. Each PARU team would have at least one communication specialist and a medical technician. Most PARU trainees were recruited from frontier provinces all across Thailand, to take the advantage of the fact that they would be able to speak the language on the other side of the border Hence, many of them did speak Lao.