Barely a year after its creation, it was relocated to Cranborne Barracks Salisbury where its headquarters remained for the rest of its existence. The Regiment became part of the Southern Rhodesian Army when the Federation dissolved at the start of and, later that year, reformed into a commando battalion. An all-white regiment, the RLI was made up wholly of professional soldiers until , when capable conscripted national servicemen were first introduced.
Foreign volunteers from across the world, including many veterans of foreign conflicts, also joined and became a key part of the Regiment. So prominent were the airborne aspects of typical RLI operations that the battalion became a parachute regiment in The RLI served under the short-lived government of Zimbabwe Rhodesia in , and the interim British government that followed.
After serving under the new government of Zimbabwe for a brief period, the unit was disbanded in October The RLI's tactics and training contributed to repeated successes in its counter-insurgency operations. As a premise, a commando could have five troops , of which only four troops were normally activated. However, with the arrival of Intake in May , the commandos were up to full strength for the first and only time. Some of the commandos mustered five troops until the end of ; with the university students demobbing at the end of , the commandos reverted to four troops in 2 Commando's case 9 Troop was deactivated.
Support Commando had a history dissimilar to all the other units and had been called Support Group for the era prior to A sizable portion of the administrative support was performed by detachments from various military services Services Corps, Medical Corps, etc.
A high percentage of Signals Troop had served in one or more Commandos before being selected and trained in-house as communicators; they focused on front line communications in support of special operations and airborne forces. Others were trained by the Corps of Signals and provided essential services exchange of classified information, etc. During the early planning stages for proposed changes to Support Group, it was accepted that Base Group was more suitable as the cynosure for all signals.
