Disagree its simple. Its still 3 units & all essentially doing the same thing. What happens when there are multiple attacks and C3I becomes an issue? Its all well when there were just two groups with a few people across France.rohitvats wrote:Actually, it is pretty simple if you read the blog link posted above.Karan M wrote:singha apparently 2 french units took part. they have their own overcomplex structure of which units handle what but both did well.
GIGN is part of what can be termed as Military Police; and MP here were historically meant to tackle situation above the threshold of police but short of calling in the Army. It is something like our CRPF but with more active involvement in the state affairs. So, French created a SF for CT/HRT Ops from this force. And the Army has its own special force unit like other armies.
And given the background of GIGN, they are more tightly integrated with their armed forces as well. And train on all aspects like HAHO/HALO.
The other units mentioned in the blog are from national police force. While GIGN is centralized, the others are spread in smaller teams across all regions of France. Something like SWAT support for police action(s). But as their action footage showed, they're trained to a higher level than your SWAT in US and are not only about special weapons and actions but active policing to keep tab on high value threats like organized crime, narcotics and now, terrorists. French can put together a team of 20-30 such personnel in their regions to handle such contingency. And GIGN can either come in later or handle more pressing matter.
We've tried to do this through NSG hubs; it would always have been better if 100-120 member team from local police would've been trained and detailed for such tasks. Even with 50% of NSG training.
They have GIGN + RAID/Local Region Swats with RAID/Region SWAT reporting to the police authority.
GIGN and RAID both took part in the ops with region SWAT as backup.
Still overcomplex. GIGN+RAID can be trained to differing standards etc. Easier to have them both combined. But hey. it worked for the French.
So far. GIGN itself has had to be expanded with additional units to bring it up to strength.
Reason French etc can get away with such whimsicality, multiple units, overlap, all funded to high levels is because terror for them (till recently) was mostly on expeditionary employment. I guess after the mass shootings they are realizing quantity has a quality of its own.
Good PR apart, the Hebdo attacks were a perfect case of intelligence failure and disastrous initial response.
If that had happened in India or some Arab, non western country, it would have been marked out as third world stuff.
Lesson for us is (hopefully) we have all regions of responsibility and national command structure earmarked with each group knowing what its AOR is & common drills and coordination.
At 26/11, NSG & Marcos could not operate together because of differing training & drills.
That issue will remain with region/local police force. At best, as first responders they can pin the attackers in place. Ultimately, for well trained and committed attackers, NSG or Military SF have to do the job. Which begs the question whether there is a nationwide common training curriculum for NSG/ArmySF/SG/Garud and Marcos so all can operate together for CQB and room clearing.
