Talk:Brigada Especial Operativa Halcón
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Hi, I just found this information on a Czech police website, hope it helps. Cheers. --Coat of Arms (talk) 16:15, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
The readers surely remember the American movie Evita, which tells a story about a part of Argentinian history, but let us take a look at it also from the perpective of special units of security forces in a more recent aspect. Back in 1986, the Falcon Special Operations Brigade (Brigada Especial Operativa Halcón, Policista 11/1997) was founded under the Police Headquarters of Buenos Aires, aiming not only at suppression of international terrorism and its activities in Argentine, but also at fighting dangerous criminals. Actually, it is ready to help or give a tactical advise to policemen whenever unusual tactical situations need to be solved. The structure of command is as follows — the brigade is ruled by the so-called comissioner, who is subordinate to the police commander, where the comissioner is responsible among others for training and drafting. The basic training consists of three phases, two months each, which also include a sort of selective course, and a test of suitability of a candidate. After the training, the men, experts in counterterrorist combat, parachuting, diving, and martial arts, are finally engaged in one of the five combat teams, each consisting of 15 men. Every team forms an independent unit, including among others snipers and negotiators, and the whole brigade may be employed as a large intervention group if needed. As is the case with other similar forces, apart from its main duty it also serves to protect VIPs, usually visiting foreign statesmen. The members of this unit, which concentrates the best combatants in Argentine, maintain close contacts with other special units abroad, mainly in USA, which were already mentioned in other issues of this irregular series (LAPD SWAT, FBI HRT, DEA etc.) Another Argentinian police special force is the Sección de Fuerzas Especiales (SFE), coming from the Argentinian Gendermerie, Gendarmería Nacional. As in the case of France (GIGN and RAID), Italy (GIS and NOCS), and many others, where police coexists with gendermerie, also here this special unit is intended for missions in countryside and inhabitated areas, whereas the Halcón unit is used for missions in cities and their neighborhood. SFE is subordinated to the Ministry of Defence, and it was founded in 1986, in which year there were traces of operation of terrorists from Hizballah in areas near the border, in connection with drug trade as a lucrative source of revenue. Its tasks were thus extended to counterterrorist operations, missions in jungle, in-depth (???) reconaissance, amphibious missions, and even helicopter parachuting. Apart from this, it may cooperate or support the Falcon Special Operations Brigade in large-scale operations. For this reason, its members were sent on internship to French CIGN, which is recently renowned for rescue of hostages from an A300 Airbus in Marseille in December 1994, apart from this the Sección de Fuerzas Especiales keeps close contacts with their Spanish colleagues from GEO (Policista 11/1996). Before an Argentinian policeman-genderme may join this unit with 44 members, he must attain the rank of sergeant, and serve at least 5 years of duty, of course he must be in an excellent physical condition, and pass a collection of psychological and physical tests. These include a swimming test, as well as running, shooting, and others. The subsequent training takes 6 months, and it is subdivided in two periods (three months each), it also includes a parachuting training apart from the already mentioned skills. This half year, which only 20% of the candidates manage to pass, is not the end of the story, it is followed by a trial period of 8 months, during which each candidate is appointed an instructor, who is one of the senior members of the unit. The unit consisting of 44 men is divided in two operative sections, each of them is further subdivided in two groups (grupo de intervención), which in turn consist of two operative teams. A section with 22 members is mission-ready on guard for 24 hours of a day, including two snipers, and other special staff, including the GEDEX pyrotechnical squad. This system enables the unit to intervene in any part of the country from its base in Ezezia in 24 hours. The size of the unit is planned to increase to 100 men, due to recent increase of terrorist activities in Argentine (attacks on Jewish representatives). Their armament is quite diverse because of their specific tasks, ranging from SIG Sauer P 226 handguns, many versions of HK MP5 machine-guns, to SIG Sauer SSG 2000 sniper rifles.
