The young girl clings to the seat. A few minutes later, she removes the virtual reality headset. “It gives you chills, it really feels like it. It gave me goosebumps,” smiles this 18-year-old student, from the north, who came Tuesday morning to the opening of the Milipol salon with two friends. This year, the national gendarmerie is offering visitors an immersion with its intervention group using a virtual reality headset. For the occasion, the interior of an airliner was reproduced and installed in a corner of the Ministry of the Interior stand.
Volunteers sit in one of the six seats provided, and place the VR headset in front of their eyes. No need to buckle up for this flight. In a few seconds, they left this immense arms fair of all kinds, organized each year at the Parc des Expositions in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis). Here they are in a device hijacked by terrorists.
“Show GIGN’s know-how during an emblematic mission”
The lights are off, the passengers plunged into darkness. Suddenly, amid a deafening noise, a GIGN assault column appears at the end of the corridor. Protected by an imposing shield and heavily armed, three soldiers advance cautiously in the central corridor of the plane, shouting: “GIGN! » Dazzled by the spotlight held by one of the intervention force operators, the passengers, both panicked and relieved, are invited to get off the aircraft one by one, hands on their heads.
“It’s a way for us to show the know-how of the GIGN during an emblematic mission of the unit,” explains to 20 minutes squadron leader Bastien, deputy head of the intervention force. The latter had indeed distinguished itself on December 26, 1994, in Marseille, by attacking an Air France Airbus A300, hijacked by four terrorists from the Algerian GIA (Armed Islamic Group). The operation, which ended in the death of the hostage-takers, was the last carried out in a plane by the GIGN. Which does not prevent the soldiers of this elite unit from preparing for this type of intervention, just in case.
Training in real conditions
To practice, the GIGN installed a giant replica of an airliner on one of its training sites, located in Ile-de-France. In addition, once a month, at night, around thirty soldiers – operators, doctors, deminers, dog handlers, etc. – go to Orly or Roissy airport, to train to launch an attack in an airplane, in real conditions. The passengers are, most of the time, other members of the unit. “This allows us to get their feedback on what they felt, and thus work on our management of the hostages,” underlines the deputy head of the intervention force.
The gendarmes adapt their strategies and tactics to the constraints involved in intervening in an airliner filled with explosive material. The members of the intervention force, each weighed down with 50 kg of weapons and protective equipment, must progress in a cramped environment, with a large number of hostages, under fire from terrorists. Before entering the aircraft, they studied the plane’s plans and data that the unit’s strategists update regularly.
The Olympics in sight
A division of the GIGN also imagined and developed equipment and weapons specific to this type of mission, based on feedback. In 1994, the soldiers who attacked the tarmac of Marignane airport approached the Air France Airbus A300 by boarding mobile gangways that were poorly suited to the situation. Almost thirty years later, the gendarmerie now has armored vehicles, equipped with ladders, which allow intervention teams to advance towards the device in complete safety.
“We can intervene in France, but also abroad, on the orders of the Prime Minister, in a plane of a French company or if French nationals are on board the aircraft,” specifies squadron leader Bastien. And the senior officer emphasized that the GIGN is preparing to be able to intervene if a crisis were to arise during the Paris Olympic Games in 2024. “We have strengthened our work on the different vectors of travel, buses or airplanes. »