As most of the training in the KGB academy concentrated on plainclothes operational work focused on espionage and counter-espionage, in 1955 the First Chief Directorate of the service established the Development Courses for Officer Personnel (Курсы усовершенствования офицерского состава (КУОС), Latinized abbreviation KUOS) – a training cadre with the purpose of training general duty KGB officers in irregular warfare and combat tactics for clandestine operations overseas or as a stay-behind cadre and backbone for the formation of partisan units in case of a foreign invasion.

The main purpose of the KUOS center was the regular and irregular combat training of KGB Academy cadets as part of the establishment's curriculum.

The secondary purpose was in case of a rising tension in a specific region to generate a tailored task group out of the cadets currently in an advanced stage of their training.

Later, when the Soviet leadership re-evaluated the situation and ordered a military intervention the dual characteristics of those KGB officers as intelligence operatives with advanced combat training and their location within the Presidential Palace made them ideal to both gather intel on the actions of the Afghan leadership and spearhead the assault on the residence, opening the way for the "Muslim Battalion" (154th Special Operations Independent Force – 154-й Отдельный отряд специального назначения) of the GRU Spetsnaz.

On August 19, 1981 at a classified meeting the Soviet government made the decision for a permanent Special Operations Task Group within the KGB's First Chief Directorate.

The founding commander of Vympel is Captain 1st Rank Ewald Kozlov, a graduate of the Baku Naval Officer School, with a service career in the Northern Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla.

Right after that Kozlov transferred from the Soviet Armed Forces to the KGB, entering the First Chief Directorate's Department "S" (overseas illegal operatives).

[6] With its formation the Vympel Special Operations Task Group was put under the command of First Chief Directorate's Department "S" - the KGB's overseas clandestine service (Управление "С" (нелегальная разведка) ПГУ КГБ) under the covert name Independent Training Center (Отдельный учебный центр (ОУЦ)).

Vympel was tasked with assassinating the top leadership of enemy states and destroying strategic infrastructure in the critical "special period," when the outbreak of war between the superpowers would have been unavoidable.

The bulk of the Vympel operatives could not stand the humiliation of being subordinated to the police, and duly resigned: of 278 officers, only 57 chose to remain within the MVD.

Little is known about its current operations and activities, with the exception being the capture of the Chechen militant leader Salman Raduyev in March 2000 and the assault on the school in Beslan in September 2004.