The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 5 letter word PARAS
I've seen this crossword clue in Independent
P
A
R
A
S
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "troops" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case troops = paras.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does PARAS mean?
PARAS noun- A former subunit of currency in several countries in the Ottoman/Turkish and Yugoslav regions.
- A woman who has had a certain number of pregnancies, indicated by the number prepended to this word.
- A paratrooper.
- A passage in text that is about a different subject from the preceding text, marked by commencing on a new line, the first line sometimes being indented.
- A mark or note set in the margin to call attention to something in the text, such as a change of subject.
- An offset of 16 bytes in Intel memory architectures.