XBradTC

The French counter-terror police have a pretty good reputation. Based on this video, that may need a bit of rethinking.

First, as the metal door rolls up, the first guy in the stack goes in, and maneuvers. So far, so good. Violence of action is the rule of thumb in these things.

The problem is, the rest of the stack leaves him hanging. As Andrew Exum says,

https://twitter.com/ExumAM/status/553988689958014976

A couple other thoughts-

• More flashbangs sooner. They could have had them going in well before the door was up.
• Every copy of the video I’ve found pauses right as the terrorist starts to fall in the doorway. The CIGN keeps shooting the crap out of him, as you can tell from the audio. That’s not really a problem, per se, but CIGN is on BOTH sides of the doorway. You’re almost guaranteed some fraticide from the circular firing squad set up.
• This particular video doesn’t show the crowd of hostages pouring forth, but the general rule of thumb in these situations is to have an operator take physical control of each single hostage, both to act as a shield, and to ensure they are a) an actual hostage, b) not armed, c) not harmed or otherwise injured, and d) not a suspect trying to escape in the confusion.
• For all the noise and fury over how bad the M4 is in US service, look at what CIGN was carrying.

Update: the unpaused video is here, but WordPress stubbornly refuses to embed liveleak.