The Commando Raiders or Commando Raider Teams (CRTs) were a Laotian paramilitary commando unit, which operated closely with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the final phase of the Laotian Civil War, from 1968 to 1973.

In late 1968, the Savannakhet Unit of the CIA decided to raise a special irregular commando raider unit for specialised crash site recovery along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in south-eastern Laos. Taking especial care to select educated and physically fit young Laotian candidates, two separate groups or "classes" of 40 men each were raised during early 1969. There was a class from Military Region 2 of northern Laos and another from southern Laos; in Autumn 1969, another class of 60 volunteers from Savannakhet was enrolled into the Commando Raiders program.

In March 1969, a U.S. Special Forces (USSF) 17-man team was sent to Phitscamp, Thailand, in order to set up a training camp there for the Commando Raiders' course. Some of the USSF team's members had prior experience in unconventional warfare as participants in the earlier Operation Pincushion or with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG); the latter organization devised the three-month curriculum for the training program to be held at Phitscamp. The two early classes were trained separately from one another for two main reasons: one was the animosity between the classes, which had different ethnical backgrounds; the other was that the American trainers did not want the trainees to discover that the pay rates differed between the two classes, with the southerners receiving higher wages.

Upon arriving to Phitscamp, the trainees were divided into eight-man teams, with a USSF adviser being assigned to each team. As part of their training programme, they were familiarized with both friendly and enemy weaponry and equipment they would use on their missions. Besides attending weapons handling and commando courses, the teams were also given parachute training just before their graduation in August 1969. After completing the Commando Raider course, they were then sent to their operational base in Laos, an isolated CIA camp located northeast of Savannakhet dubbed "Whiskey-3".

By 1972, the Commando Raiders strength peaked at about 200 officers and enlisted men, all airborne-qualified volunteers, organized into three independent para-commando companies, comprising three headquarters (HQ) sections and each broken into 12-men teams:

The Commando Raiders were initially employed primarily on bomb damage assessment, cross border reconnaissance forays, hazardous ambushes and raids, pathfinder insertions, prisoner of war acquisition for interrogation, and tracking targets, though they were deployed in other military regions to demonstrate symbolic support from the Royal Lao Government. As the war progressed, the Commando Raiders shifted from their original special operations role to become Airborne Pathfinders instead.

Recruitment of local Commando Raiders began in January 1970 and after a hasty training stint in Thailand, the Raiders were returned to Military Region 1 (MR 1) in June that year. They were deployed as road watchers along the Route 46 portion of the Chinese Road, using the Hark-1 to gather military intelligence.

In late 1969, the northern class comprising 40 Commando Raiders was deployed to the Ban Pha Khao staging base, accompanied by an experienced CIA case officer. On 26 November 1970, the Raiders played a key role in Operation Counterpunch, when they seized the airstrip at San Tiau. An additional company of Raiders was raised in January 1970. On February 22, 32 Commando Raiders were committed to a raid over the border towards Điện Biên Phủ in North Vietnam. Dropped by Air America helicopters to the west of their target but still within Laos, the Raiders slipped across the border and staged a rocket attack on an officers' meeting at a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) headquarters. The Commandos then exfiltrated to be picked up by Air America Helicopters on February 24.