The National Gendarmes Intervention Group, commonly abbreviated GIGN (French: Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale), is the French Gendarmerie's elite counter-terrorism and hostage rescue unit. It is composed of 120 men, including 11 officers.

Its missions include the arrest of gunmen, in particular those taking hostages, counter-terrorism, including airplane hijacking, or prevention of mutiny in prisons.

It is headquartered in Satory, west of Paris. Along with the EPIGN and the GSPR it forms the GSIGN (Groupement de Sécurité et d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, Grouping of Security and Intervention of the National Gendarmerie).

History

After the Munich massacre during the Olympic Games in 1972, and a prison mutiny in Clairvaux the next year, France started to study the possible solutions to extremely violent attacks, under the assumptions that these would be difficult to predict and deflect.

In , the GIGN was created as a permanent force of men trained and equipped to respond to these kind of threats while minimising risks for the public and hostages, for the members of the unit, and for the attackers themselves. The GIGN became operational on the first of March, 1974, under command of Lieutenant Christian Prouteau.

Ten days later, a deranged person was successfully stopped in Ecquevilly, validating the techniques of the unit and proving its necessity. Originally, GIGN was relatively small, starting out with 15 operatives. This number would increase to 48 by 1984, 57 by 1988, and 87 in 2000.

Structure

The GIGN is divided into a command cell, an administrative group, four operational troops of twenty operators, an operational support troop including negotiation, breaching, intelligence, communications, marksmanship, dogs and special equipment cells. The special equipment group equips the unit with modified and high-tech equipment, by either selecting or designing it. GIGN is used about 60 times each year.

All members go through training which includes shooting, long-range =marksmanship, an airborne course and hand-to-hand combat techniques (Krav Maga). Members of the GIGN are widely regarded as having some of the best firearms training in the world. It is for this reason that many of the world's special operations and counterterrorist units conduct exchange programs with the GIGN. Most of the GIGN volunteers are family men rather than the supermen which the media often makes them out to be. Members never say GIGN but instead say "the group." Mental ability and self-control are important in addition to physical strength. Like most special forces, the training is stressful with a high washout rate of only 7-8% of volunteers making it to the training process. GIGN members must be prepared to disarm suspects with their bare hands.

There are two tactical specialties in the group : HALO/HAHO and divers. Members learn several technical specialties among police dogs, breaching, long-range sniping, negotiation, etc.