Their motto is Audaces Fortuna Juvat (Latin for "Fortune Favors the Bold") and their war cry is Mama Sumae (it can be translated as "here we are, ready for the sacrifice" – taken from a Bantu tribe of southern Angola).

When the Overseas War started in 1961 in Angola, the Portuguese Army employed its units of Special Caçadores.

This however proved to be unfeasible and the Army founded itself without units able to conduct special operations in the scope of guerrilla warfare.

For the preparation of these groups, the CI 21 – Centro de Instrução de Contraguerrilha (Counter-Guerrilla Instruction Centre) was created, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Nave, and had as instructor, the photographer and former French Foreign Legion Sergeant, the Italian Dante Vachi, with experience in the Indochina and Algerian wars.

They were deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, where a sergeant was killed by a roadside bomb; the first commando KIA since the end of the Portuguese Colonial War.

In 2006, Army Chief of Staff General "Comando" Pinto Ramalho informed that the Army was developing studies in order to raise a third Operational Company, with a size force increase; the Centro de Tropas Comando are actually a garrison in Carregueira.

In its first phase, the commandos organised into independent groups composed of volunteers from infantry battalions, forming their intervention units.

The success of these groups meant that they rapidly started to be used under the commander-in-chief's and military commanders' orders, to conduct special operations.

Another type of organisation was adapted to the companies of African commandos, formed in Guinea and composed of metropolitan soldiers when needed, a bit like the Green Berets did in Vietnam War with the "advisers".

The war's evolution, the necessity that started to exist of fighting in large units in Guinea and Mozambique and to, sometimes simultaneously, conduct irregular warfare and special operations actions, led to the creation of commando battalions in those two theatres.

Although Angola's Commando Instruction Centre was the home and it was in that centre that the main core of military doctrine of use and mystique of the commandos were formed, all battalions gave instruction to their staff and formed units to intervene in the operations theatre.

That means that they must be constantly ready and, to the smallest indication, present themselves on the parade ground or where they are ordered to, and follow whatever the instructors say.

It might happen that they stay uninterrupted in instruction for more than a day, or that they have to conduct their daily lives during the night.

When a recruit successfully completes the instruction he is badged as a commando and receives the famous red beret.