[citation needed] The 68th SF Brigade was transformed into the Joint Special Operations Command (Bulgarian: Съвместно командване на специалните операции) on November 1, 2019.

However, the demonstration was a proof of concept due to the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine after World War I, which prohibited Bulgaria from having an air force.

The first three jumps were conducted according to the training syllabus for Junkers Ju 52-m3 transport aircraft and the standard parachute system and went uneventful with excellent results.

For the fourth jump, the instructors decided to experiment with the use of the RS-20 system (still in development) from the bomb bays of Heinkel He 111 bombers from 300 meters height and speed of 350 km/h, assuring the Bulgarian officers, that this is a standard procedure.

This experiment lead to several injuries, including the first casualty of a Bulgarian paratrooper - Private Georgi Shterionov from Burgas, who died at the ground impact.

Photographs of the German and Bulgarian officers together in Sofia, including Captain Noev, show that the relationship was cordial and comradely.

The Minister for War's order for the formation of the unit dates from 18 March 1943 and its location was decided to be the Vrazhdebna airfield (present day Sofia IAP).

On 14 June 10 soldiers were sent to the Reserve Officers School of the Air Troops in Kazanlak (Школа за запасни офицери към Въздушните войски) as the air force (the paratroopers' mother service) was called at the time, to attend a reserve officers training course for the parachute troops in order to facilitate the growth of the battalion.

In the autumn of 1943 the Allied bombings of Sofia escalated and most of the battalion's manpower (minus 75 men staying behind in Vrazhdebna) was re-located to Telish airfield near Pleven on 28 January 1944.

On the insistence of the paratroopers themselves the Parachute Druzhina was subordinated to the First Bulgarian Army, leaving for the front in Yugoslavia on 10 October and arriving in the village of Poeshevo the same day.

The battle was part of the Bulgarian Army's Stratsim-Kumanovo Offensive Operation with the goal to cut off the direction for retreat from Greece of the Wehrmacht's Army Group E. During its operational deployment of a month and a half the Parachute druzhina fought several formations of the Wehrmacht in Macedonia, including the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, achieving several victories.

Major Kalapchiev lead a very purpose oriented, which established him as an eccentric officer among his peers and brought him in conflict with members of other armed and security services.

On 23 November 1959 it expanded to battalion equivalent and a year later relocated to the village of Chelopechene (just to the east of Sofia, a major military base during the Cold War).

In 1964 the Ministry of People's Defense decided to merge the three army para-recon companies in the 68th Training Parachute Reconnaissance Base - General Staff Reserve (68ма УПРБ – РГК) in parallel to the identical 86th.

The naming of the Training Parachute Reconnaissance Base of the special forces units was in the spirit of the Soviet Maskirovka also widely applied by the Soviet Cold War allies and these were operational special operations units, concentrating their capabilities mostly on wartime actions against the two NATO member countries in the region - Greece (the 86th TPRB) and Turkey (the 68th TPRB).

The Bulgarian paratroopers achieved very high levels of proficiency and combat readiness and this was illustrated at such occasions as the "Brotherhood in Arms '70" major exercise of the Warsaw Pact Organisation, held in the German Democratic Republic.

With a lower border of the cloud cover less than 200 meters all the other Warsaw Pact members parachute contingents (including the Soviet VDV and GRU-Spetsnaz) refused to make the jump.

A combined force of 180 Bulgarian paratroopers from the 68th and 86th TPRB jumped from the An-12 cargo transports, which came as a complete surprise for the Warsaw Pact's high-ranking officials at the site, when their canopies emerged from the clouds.

This was an exception of the rules and he was the only BPA's full Colonel battalion commander, due to his achievements, among others the exemplary participation of the Bulgarian paratroopers at the exercise in East Germany in 1970.

[3] The two TPRBs were subordinated to the Bulgarian People's Army's Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (Разузнавателно управление на Генералния щаб (РУ-ГЩ)).

On 30 July 1993 the 68th Independent Parachute-Reconnaissance Regiment "Spetsnaz" (68ми Oтделен парашутно-разузнавателен полк „СПЕЦНАЗ" (68-ми ОПРП „СПЕЦНАЗ”)) under Colonel Toma Damyanov was restructured into 68th Parachute-Reconnaissance Brigade "Spetsnaz" and once again put under the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (Разузнавателно управление на Генералния щаб (РУ-ГЩ)).

In the summer of 1998 the three army para-recon battalions were disbanded and concentrated in the new 18th Parachute-Reconnaissance Regiment (18ти Парашутно-разузнавателен полк (18ти ПРП)) in Sliven under Col. Nacho Nachev.

The endemic lack of funding in the Bulgarian Army contributed significantly to that and their reintroduction into the Land Forces made things even worse.

Yet their state of disrepair and the higher readiness and manpower capabilities of the 68th SOF Brigade meant that a considerable number of its personnel would take part in those missions, relegated merely to conventional light infantry.

The exact structure is not publicly known, but it is around 1500 service members roughly from: The Brigade's missions include: The Bulgarian Special Forces personnel regularly attends training courses abroad and military exercises organised by the NATO partners.

In addition there is a partnership between Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia, signed in 2015 and ratified by the states in 2016 for the joint development of special forces elements.

[11] The JSOC is in the process of acquiring 100 Rila MRAPs manufactured locally, with 45 units delivered as of 2021.Rila Xtreme MRAP[12] is a family of 4X4 and 6X6 specialized armored vehicles developed by the Canadian armed vehicles manufacturer International Armored Group founded in Richmond Hill, Ontario by the Bulgarian engineer Dr. Anton Stefov.

[13] The manufacturing of the vehicles takes place in Samokov by SamArm[14] - an equal shares joint venture between International Armored Group and Samel 90, a Bulgarian military supplier specialized in communication systems.