Weapons of war in the hands of terrorists and drug traffickers and fired at point blank range before the security forces. Analysts from the Ministry of the Interior have been verifying for years that with increasing frequency – both nationally and internationally – highly capable rifles and submachine guns designed for the battlefield appear in operations against jihadism or organized crime. . Or, at least, attempts to get hold of those weapons of a military nature. The problem among the security forces, as it appears in numerous recent reports, is that the war in Ukraine, as happened in the nineties with the conflict in the Balkans, ends up flooding the black market with these heavy weapons. And the Ministry of the Interior has decided to anticipate.
The General Directorate of the Police, in a purchase of unprecedented characteristics, has called two tenders to obtain shields and plates for vests capable of withstanding rifle fire and explosions for the Campo de Gibraltar units and anti-terrorist agents.
In its official documents, to which this newspaper has had access, Interior does not hide the tricky situation that officials are experiencing in the Strait area. The Interior wants to have 112 state-of-the-art ballistic shields and high-capacity armor (valued at more than 295,000 euros) before October 1 for the agents of the Special Security Plan for the Campo de Gibraltar, in addition to certain members of the provinces of Almería, Granada and Seville, where the presence of groups of drug traffickers with heavy weapons is also being detected.
“imperative need”
According to the Police, the “need” for these shields is “imperative” for the units of “first intervention operational nature”, since more and more these agents are facing “attacks with weapons of war, especially of the 7.62 mm caliber”, such as the popular Kalashnikov rifles.
The new shields will go to “certain police services such as the specific devices that are set up in the Campo de Gibraltar area to combat organized crime and drug trafficking, as well as criminal networks of illegal immigration and access to national territory illegally,” insists the Ministry of the Interior.
The department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska, which details that these new generation shields will be able to withstand a shot from a weapon of war at less than fifteen meters, are already essential to “safeguard their physical integrity during these police actions due to the high level of danger that the organizations established in that territorial area (the Campo de Gibraltar) hold”.
The other vertex of the Interior’s concern about the proliferation of weapons of war is jihadism. The Police has set itself the goal of obtaining, before November 1, at least 1,000 interchangeable plates with a high protection capacity to fill the vests of troops intended for security in places of “great concurrence of people or in locations where security infrastructures are located. critical character’, main targets of terrorists.
Interior, which will allocate more than 315,000 euros to this project, will provide these new protections to “police members of the Public Order Units (UIP-UPR), Citizen Security Units and personnel attached to the International Cooperation Division (DCI)” .
“armor-piercing ammunition”
The Police insist that the current jihadist terrorism is focused on “violent actions” that “seek to cause the greatest possible harm to the civilian population, using for this, in addition to explosives loaded with shrapnel, long weapons with armor-piercing ammunition that can penetrate with relative ease.” the protections offered by conventional bulletproof vests.
According to police experts, the plates that the Interior is going to buy for the “main response units to attacks and for police officers assigned to international missions” in addition to withstanding shots from weapons such as a Kalashnikov at close range may also, if necessary, protect the trunk of the shrapnel of a medium power bomb of a suicide bomber, although it is not that main function.
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